H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “How much did you see of it?” Bill asked.

  “We used to see a lot of it,” I said. “We were all brought up with the Skipper’s children. Why, Mrs. Ewing always saw that every boy came in once a week to tea, and the Sixth Form always came in on Sundays for a pick-up supper.”

  “It sounds like a biological laboratory,” Bill said. “It’s like the neurologists at all those nervous-breakdown places. They have to have a happy married life or else they’ll be fired. Well, go ahead. What did the Skipper teach you?”

  “You can sneer at it all you like, Bill,” I told him. “It doesn’t affect me, because you don’t understand. The Skipper had the guts to stand for what he stood for. That’s more than either you or I have.”

  “We don’t get a house and a salary for it,” Bill said. “We don’t get paid for having guts. Don’t get mad, Harry. You couldn’t help it. Most of us were sent away from home somewhere and made to adjust ourselves to some arbitrary, artificial world that was built up by some positive and not intelligent individual. The only thing you can do is to try to snap out of it. Say good-by to it fast. Good-by, Mr. Chips.”

  “There are a lot of things you never say good-by to,” I said, “if you go to a first-rate school.”

  “Yes,” Bill said, “that’s true. Not when they catch you young.”

  “You have to have standards to live,” I said.

  “Did you ever meet a poor boy there?” Bill asked. “Did you ever learn that people are abused and hungry, or what a minimum wage is? Did you ever get outside and go downtown? Did anybody ever teach you what the other ninety-nine per cent of people think about?”

  “You learn that later,” I said. “I spent the happiest time of my life there, the most worth-while time. I wish I were back there now.”

  “The old subconscious desire,” Bill said, “to crawl back into your mother’s womb.”

  Now, I can be amused by people when they talk that way. I am even broad-minded enough to see their point of view, but there is nothing easier than to make fun of something that you do not understand.

  I wish I might go back there again, because I did well at school. I was never one of the leaders. I never stood high in my form. I was too light for football, but of course I played it, because everyone had to play. I never did like baseball, but I wrote things for The Crier, the school paper. None of this meant very much, but I was an integral part of something—a part of a group.

  I wish I could go back. Whenever autumn comes, even now, if I am in the country, I seem to be close to school. I still have all the indefinable sensations which mark the beginnings of a new year. I think of the fresh pages of new books and of the Upper Field and of the Lower Field, with their goalposts, and of the tennis courts and of the red and yellow of the maples. And I can see the Skipper, younger then.

  “That was well played, Pulham,” I can hear him saying. “Show fight, always show fight.”

  Every autumn I can see the faces of my form. Their names run through my mind, and their nicknames, and their physical peculiarities. It was a good form. Out of it came a banker and a state senator, two doctors and a scientist, a drunkard, and a good many brokers and lawyers. One was killed along the Meuse in the Argonne drive, and one was killed in a motor accident, and one has died of heart failure—five of them have been divorced, two of them are dead-broke—on the whole not a bad record. I wish that I were back. I have often said that to myself before I have gone to sleep. I wish that I were back where there was someone like the Skipper to tell me what to do, someone who knew absolutely what was right and what was wrong, someone who had an answer to everything. There was always an answer at school, and a good answer. No matter what the world was like you could still play the game. I wish to God that I were back.

  VII

  It Never Helps to Talk About It

  I was very much surprised once when my sister Mary told me that she used to hate my guts whenever I came back from School. It happened when I stopped in one afternoon perhaps a year ago with a paper for her to sign. It was a Saturday afternoon and Mary was just back from riding, still in her tweed coat and boots and breeches. Jim, her husband, was out somewhere and Mary asked if I wanted a cocktail. We each had several cocktails, a good deal more than we should have had, perhaps. I took them, because they seemed to be about all that Mary and I had in common that afternoon. Our lives had drifted a long way apart, but we each wanted to be agreeable.

  “Take another one,” Mary said. “It will put hair on your chest.”

  That speech of hers made me wonder what Mother would have said if she had been alive to hear her. Mary put her arm through mine and pulled me down on the sofa.

  “You’re not so bad when you loosen up,” Mary said. “Have another drink. Put it down the hatch.” And then for no reason that I can think of, unless it was the gin and vermouth, we were talking about the old days, just as though we still saw a lot of each other. That was how she happened to say that she always hated me when I came back from school.

  “I was definitely maladjusted,” Mary said. “That was why I had those screaming fits.”

  “You’re still maladjusted,” I told her.

  “Father was all right,” Mary said, “but I never could hit it off with Mother. I don’t blame the Governor—”

  “Now, look here, Mary—” I began.

  “Is there any harm, sweetheart,” Mary asked me, “in being frank every now and then? She actually told me once that sex was a cross you had to bear, one of women’s burdens.”

  “Now, look here, Mary,” I said.

  “You were in love with her,” Mary said, “it was all Œdipus.”

  “There was no one in the world sweeter than Mother,” I told her, “and I’m not going to sit here—”

  “Darling,” Mary said, “why can’t we talk about things frankly and naturally? It’s fun.”

  “It isn’t fun to throw mud at your parents,” I said.

  “They couldn’t help it, Harry,” Mary said. “It was all just subconscious, just like our mutual antipathy. Subconsciously we both hate each other, because we both started competing for our mother’s love.”

  “My God,” I said, “I don’t hate you, Mary. I’ve always liked you very much.”

  “Those emotions are all mixed in together,” Mary said. “I transferred my love to you even when I hated you.”

  “What are you talking about, Mary?” I asked her.

  “I’ve been going to Doctor Stanwick,” Mary said. “He gives me a lot of ideas about how to handle Jimmy.”

  “What’s the matter with Jim?” I asked. “Aren’t you getting on?”

  “Never mind about Jim,” Mary answered. “I was in love with Father and you were in love with Mother, and then I was in love with you and I hated you.”

  I could see even then that we had been drinking more than was good for either of us, and Mary began to laugh again. I put my glass down on the coffee table. I hoped that Jim would not come in.

  “Mary,” I said, “you’re drunk.”

  “Oh, boo to you,” Mary said. “Do you remember when I threw a rock at you at North Harbor? I did it because I was in love with you—just the way Mary Shelley was in love with Percy Bysshe.” I did not answer and Mary looked down at the toes of her riding boots. “And the funny thing about it was that we were all emotionally and sexually involved and none of us ever knew it.”

  That conversation was of course completely fantastic, but no more peculiar than others I have heard, now that everyone can talk frankly about everything.

  “Now, Mary,” I said, “we were a perfectly normal family.”

  “But I didn’t say we weren’t normal,” Mary answered. “It’s part of natural evolution to fall in love with your parents, but I’m frank to say I resent a good deal that they did. They were a total flop as child-rearers.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Mary,” I said.

  “Why wait?” Mary answered. “I’m not criticizing our parents any more than othe
r parents. Most of them were silly, lazy and uncultivated. I only blame them because they never taught us anything. Whoever wrote the commandment about honoring them couldn’t manage his own children, and besides, that generation completely ignored sex.”

  “Well,” I told her, “I don’t see that we get much further by recognizing it.”

  Mary turned her head toward me.

  “Let’s be frank,” she said. “When did you first have a sexual experience?”

  This startled me. I certainly did not want to tell her, and yet I did not want my sister to think I was afraid to face facts. I was not afraid. I simply did not want to face them.

  “Well, I can make a pretty good guess,” Mary said. “You learned a lot from Sylvia.”

  I sat up and then sank back. I did not look at her, but I knew that she was smiling in a way that I never liked. She was referring to our first cousin, Sylvia Knowles, who used to visit us in the summer at North Harbor.

  “There was nothing about Sylvia,” I said, “absolutely nothing.” Mary began to laugh.

  “That’s right,” she said. “A gentleman never tells, even if the little girl had pigtails. You used to go out in the bushes with Sylvia. You know you did.”

  “Look here,” I said. “Suppose you get this straight. There was nothing about Sylvia, absolutely nothing.”

  “You never got to first base with her,” Mary said. “I never implied that you did, darling. I know Sylvia. If it had been that little Mitchell girl who got fired from Miss Lacey’s, she might have been a real help to you, but instead of that you picked out Sylvia, because all nice boys were afraid of the Mitchell girl. You used to go out in the bushes behind the rocks after supper, and I was madly jealous. That’s why I threw a rock at you at North Harbor.”

  “My God, Mary,” I said, “why shouldn’t Sylvia and I have walked over by the rocks after supper?”

  “Don’t be so naïve,” Mary said. “I always knew you did, and Hugh knew it, and all the maids knew it, and what’s more Mother knew it too.”

  I felt my face growing red.

  “There you are,” Mary said. “Instead of treating the thing naturally as any sensible human being would, you’re blushing. What did you and Sylvia use to do out there in the bushes?”

  “You won’t believe me,” I said. “We just played a sort of game.”

  “Go on,” said Mary softly. “What did you and Sylvia play?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you, just to show how wrong you are. We played a game called a chewing game. Sylvia thought of it.”

  “She did, did she?” Mary said.

  “It wasn’t anything,” I told her. “We would take a piece of grass—the grass grew pretty long there—and we would tie a knot in the middle of the grass and then Sylvia would chew one end of the grass and I would chew the other. The game was to see who came up to the knot first. As a matter of fact, we were quite aware that it wasn’t right, and then Mother caught us doing it—”

  “That was because I told,” Mary said.

  “Oh,” I said, “you did, did you? If you want to call that a ‘sex experience’ there it was. Sylvia and I never spoke to each other after that, not for years and years.”

  “Oh, God,” said Mary, “what a life! Did you ever talk to Sylvia about it?”

  “Why, no,” I said. “Why should I?”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Mary. “Don’t you see the awful things it did to you—being given a sense of guilt over chewing a blade of grass?”

  “It didn’t do anything,” I said, and then I asked a question which I should not have asked except for the Martinis. “What about your own sex life?” I asked. “When did you have the initial sexual experience, Mary?”

  Mary threw her arm around my neck and buried her head against my shoulder. I was startled, because she was very seldom demonstrative. The shoulders of her tweed riding coat were shaking, and at first I thought she was laughing.

  “Mary, you’re drunk,” I said.

  “I know I am,” said Mary, “and I don’t care. I never knew anything about anything until the war. When I was eighteen I used to think that babies came by rubbing the wedding ring.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” I said.

  “I’m not,” said Mary. “Before God I’m not, because you and I were nice and everyone was nice. They left us little babes in the woods. To hell with them—to hell with them!”

  I should have known that Mary could not hold her liquor.

  “Just forget about it, Mary,” I said. “Sex isn’t important if you take it naturally.”

  “Naturally!” Mary said, and she choked. “Did anyone ever let us?”

  The front door downstairs slammed and Mary straightened up and shook her hair back.

  “There’s Jim,” she said. “Where’s that God-damned paper, Harry, and what’s the date?”

  “What was Jim’s first sexual experience?” I asked.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Mary. “Anything about sex always makes Jim angry. Harry, please shut up.”

  My brother-in-law came in, walking heavily. Jim was somewhat overweight, and the small dinosaur which he wore on his watch chain shone brightly.

  “Where have you been keeping yourself?” Jim asked. “How is Kay?”

  “Kay’s fine,” I said.

  “We’ve all got to get together sometime,” Jim said, “and talk about the old days at North Harbor.”

  “Yes,” I said, “we ought to get together.”

  I can remember it all very clearly, although I must have tried for years to forget it. Sylvia was much nicer than Mary—gentler, prettier, and she had no fits of temper. The white dress that she always put on after supper was very much neater and fluffier than Mary’s, and she had very soft gold hair in two braids and mild blue eyes. I liked her first when I found that she was not afraid to catch crabs off the pier and she never screamed the way Mary did. We became friends one day when Mary was angry about something and stayed in her room and later we used to walk around together a good deal and I tried to show her how to skip stones on the water.

  “I know a game,” Sylvia said. “I saw some people playing it at a picnic. I’ll show you if you come behind the rocks. It’s a secret.”

  “Why do we have to go behind the rocks?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a secret,” Sylvia said, “and there’s a good deal of spit in it.”

  We looked at each other shyly. We were entirely alone, nothing but the tall grass and the singing of the crickets.

  “It’s just a game,” Sylvia said. “You see, you take a piece of grass and tie a knot—” We knelt down behind the rock and Sylvia looked at me.

  “I wouldn’t do this with anyone but you,” she said.

  I remember the singing of the crickets. I never realized how pretty she was. I could understand why it was a thing not to be done in public.

  “Let’s do it again,” I said.

  “All right,” said Sylvia. “We’ll do it three times—and we’ll do it three times every day after supper, but you mustn’t tell anyone.”

  “No,” I said, “I won’t.”

  “Children,” I can hear Mother calling to me still, “whatever are you doing behind the rocks? You’d better come in now.”

  I can never understand why I felt deeply humiliated. It was not anything she said.

  “It’s cold behind the rocks after supper,” Mother said. “Sylvia, Mary’s been looking for you. Harry, you can come with me and help me pick nasturtiums. Isn’t it beautiful when the sun’s going down?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re getting to be such a big boy,” Mother said.

  I did not answer. I looked at Sylvia running toward the house.

  “Harry,” Mother said, “you’re always gentle with girls, aren’t you? Girls aren’t very strong. Girls are different from boys, and Sylvia is your cousin. You must always be gentle with Sylvia.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I looked down at the ground. I coul
d feel her watching me. I could not have looked at her if I had tried. I actually wished that I were dead.

  “It’s better,” Mother said, “not to be alone with girls. Harry, will you promise me—don’t be alone with Sylvia again?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Harry,” she said, “what makes you speak so crossly?”

  “Leave me alone,” I said. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Harry,” Mother answered, “I’ll have to speak to Father.”

  “Leave me alone,” I shouted. “Leave me alone!” And I turned and ran away.

  I do not know whether she ever spoke to Father, but it was as close as I ever came with either of them to a discussion of sex.

  VIII

  May I Have This Dance?

  “Well, Harry,” Father used to say when I was about sixteen, “what do you read at school?”

  And I would tell him that we were reading Macbeth or The Mill on the Floss.

  “We don’t have much time to get together,” he told me once. “I used to see a good deal more of my father when I was your age, because I came home every night. There are a lot of things I ought to tell you.”

  Father himself was like required reading, something which you faced with a sense of duty and were rather surprised if it interested you. He was like Ivanhoe and Silas Marner and Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield with footnotes in the back, and the Roger de Coverley Papers and Southey’s Life of Nelson and Milton’s L’Allegro and Tennyson’s Princess. In vacation time he was like the lists of suggested summer reading, something to be gone through with, but something, I knew, that was not connected with my real interests. He was not like Dumas or like Winston Churchill’s Crossing, or like the romances of Robert W. Chambers where girls sometimes appeared in the hero’s bedroom in negligee. He was not contemporary or sprightly. At any rate, there was not much time for Father and not much time for reading either.

  All my activities were too carefully planned to allow for an interruption such as Father. My friends and I were on a schedule at school and on vacation. Even when we were at home we were being caught up in a manner of living which was beyond our parents’ control. There were sailing lessons with a man who was known as “the Captain.” There was a tennis lesson twice a week at the country club and a golf lesson. In the winter vacations there were dances. It seems to me whenever I was at home that I was always going somewhere or getting ready to go somewhere.