Caught, Back, Concluding

by Henry Green

  ‘I do wish Mary might be with us,’ he remarked, suddenly regretting the child, ill at ease.

  ‘Oh she’s all right, don’t you worry your head,’ Moira answered. Unseen by him, she pouted with jealousy.

  ‘But where is she, then?’ the old man persisted.

  ‘I thought just everyone had a very good idea,’ Moira replied. ‘I’d not trouble myself if I was you. She’s not worth it.’

  ‘She never bothered much where we were concerned,’ one of the others elaborated. ‘She put the whole show in danger. You wait until I catch Merode.’

  ‘No, but what has happened to Mary, please?’ Mr Rock begged. He was frightened again.

  ‘That’s a secret. We’re bound to silence, don’t you realise?’

  How could one be certain these children were not simply prevaricating? Because he felt some true friend of Mary must get to her if she was hidden.

  ‘Not an entirely intelligent mutism in that case,’ he tried, one more.

  ‘It’s the way it is,’ was all he got for his pains.

  ‘Many of you see much of Adams, nowadays?’ he next enquired, across the chatter they kept up at each other.

  ‘Him?’ Moira said, and laughed. ‘We call that man the answer to the virgin’s prayer.’

  ‘Now Moira, duck,’ Melissa protested. ‘Who’s gone too far this time?’

  ‘Well, a person has only to look, haven’t they? He’s enough to bring on anyone a miscarriage.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘What is the matter with Adams, if you will excuse my persistence?’ Mr Rock tried once more, floundering after information.

  ‘Look. Some of the girls in East block go out at night to find him.’

  ‘Oh no, Moira, it’s too much,’ protested another.

  ‘Not Club Members, of course,’ Moira admitted.

  ‘But anyway, how are you sure?’ the same child asked.

  ‘Because I can afford to save my beauty sleep up, thank you, until I need. I mean, I don’t have to go hogging it the whole night through in case I get pimples next morning on account of I stay awake,’ she proudly answered.

  ‘Careful the stable clock doesn’t toll midnight and catch you making faces at the horrid Adams, then. Under a new moon.’

  ‘Me?’ Moira demanded. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead beside him.’

  Mr Rock was less than ever at ease. He began to ask himself how it would look if he were caught down here.

  ‘But you do claim you have a lot on him,’ the first child insisted.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? Who’s to prevent me?’ Moira demanded.

  There was rather a pause at this last remark.

  ‘After all’s said and done, we’re only young once,’ she said, with a trace of malice, at Mr Rock. But when she continued, it was after she had correctly interpreted the lines of distaste that had formed about his mouth. ‘Oh, you needn’t pay attention, please,’ she said directly to the old man. ‘This is only a lot of talk. Fun and games,’ she added, as though to explain everything.

  Upon which a couple of atomic cracks sounded from the amplifier up in an angle. Immediately followed, crescendo, by a polka which had been out of date even in the days when the old man had had his few months dancing. So he waited for a howl of protest from the children.

  When none came, he looked up, and was amazed. With rapt expressions on their fair faces, they were already rocking to the ancient music.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’

  ‘Sh . . . Melissa. How can anyone listen if you . . .’

  For the second time, Mr Rock was moved to suppress a smile despite his fears.

  Then the apparatus stammered a few notes, gave out, broke down.

  ‘Oh, isn’t that just like this beastly hole?’ Moira wailed.

  ‘She’s hopeless. She’d never repair a thing.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to go up and have a shot, then?’

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t stop by the old apparatus, thanks. I’d find somewhere else, I expect, a little farther out.’

  ‘Will you shut up, Melissa, and for the last time?’

  ‘I say, Mr Rock,’ Moira said. ‘If I asked, would you be dreadfully angry?’

  ‘I can’t say until you have tried, can I?’ he answered.

  ‘Oh, so you will. No then, I’d better not.’

  ‘Come on out with it. Get along with you,’ he said. He had not the slightest suspicion, was even beginning to be thoroughly amused again.

  ‘We’ve all been so thrilled,’ Moira began. ‘In fact we don’t know if it will be announced some time upstairs. And if she does, you might send word down, won’t you? I mean we’d hate to miss that, through being stuck in the Inn, wouldn’t we, girls?’

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded, at his most assured.

  ‘Why, your granddaughter’s engagement, of course. Don’t pretend you haven’t kept that dark from us when . . .’, but his face so clouded over that Moira bit her fat lower lip. ‘Oh, Mr Rock, have I said something awful?’ she meekly asked.

  ‘Never heard such arrant nonsense in all my born days,’ he blustered. ‘Why, Elizabeth’s a sick woman.’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry, Mr Rock,’ Moira apologised, while the others watched, mouths open.

  ‘Just gossip,’ Mr Rock thundered, rather white. He was furious. ‘Not a word of truth.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rock,’ they said.

  ‘And if you catch anyone repeating what you’ve just told I’d be glad if you would deny it, once and for all,’ he continued, trembling. Then he struggled up. ‘I’m tired. I shall go back home to bed.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Rock, it isn’t anything we’ve said, surely?’

  ‘We live in an ungrateful world,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry, but there are times I have had enough.’

  He stalked off with dignity, and, for a short while, left behind a silence.

  Then someone said, ‘Oh Gosh,’ and laughed.

  Mr Rock came away in a flustered rage. He banged on the stair door and a new girl immediately opened. She, also, was chewing. He thrust straight past, shambled off uglily and at speed to where they danced.

  A white bunch of children, stood in the doorway, fell open to let him through like a huge dropped flower losing petals on a path. Then the thunderous, swinging room met him smack in his thick lenses, the hundred couples sweating glassily open-eyed now it was late; each child that pulled at her partner’s waist to speed it, to gyrate quicker, get much more hot, to keep pace.

  Elizabeth saw him. She considered if she would hide, but knew it might be wicked. Accordingly she yelled, ‘See Gapa, darling.’ Even then, Sebastian, cheek to her mouth, barely caught what she said. In any case, he paid no heed.

  At the same moment the old man had a dark sight of them both. He made such an immense gesture to summon Liz, he almost smashed off his nose the spectacles that reflected reeling chandeliers. ‘In a minute,’ her lips shaped back across the shattering valse. He did not take this in, misunderstood it for impertinence.

  But when, inevitably as tumbled water, the dance delivered them over, two leaves that touch beneath a weir, caught in the eddies, till they were by his side, she awoke Sebastian as she drew off from the young man’s arms. He said,

  ‘Why hullo, sir?’

  ‘We must go. We are not welcome,’ the grandfather told Liz.

  ‘Hush, Gapa,’ she said. But he walked away, they followed, and a second time that group of children opened, reclosed behind the couple trailing after, having parted as another vast bloom might that, torn by a wind in summer, lies collectedly dying on crushed fallen leaves, to be divided by one and then two walkers, only for a strain of wind to reassemble it, to be rolled back complete on the path once more, at the whim of autumnal airs again.

  The three left music.

  ‘Hush,’ she at last repeated, when he could hear.

  ‘There is no use. We are not wanted,’ Mr Rock announced, in a low voice.

  �
��Why? What? I insist, has anything happened?’

  ‘We need never have demeaned ourselves,’ he said.

  ‘Oh do say,’ she wailed. ‘Was it dreadful? But Gapa, you’re making me nervous.’

  ‘No. We have to get out, that is all,’ he explained. ‘D’you hear?’ And came to a halt.

  ‘Don’t go now, sir,’ Sebastian cravenly protested.

  They stood, a miserable trio in black cloth, in the dank dark; music at their heels.

  ‘What?’ Mr Rock demanded.

  ‘I said why just yet?’ Birt asked, pale and obstinate.

  ‘I’ve seen enough,’ the old man proclaimed. ‘Miserable children that they are. Too much freedom here. Lack of control. All they have to do is chatter,’ he ended.

  ‘Was it about your lectures, then?’ she enquired.

  ‘They’re downright illnatured,’ he replied, at a tangent. ‘And inclining towards a dangerous mentality in which I shall take no lot or part. I hope a man of my years would know better. Come out.’

  ‘But Gapa, don’t you think, I mean mightn’t it all look rather odd if we simply just walked off? Oughtn’t we at least to say goodbye, you must agree?’

  ‘Everything comes if one can bide one’s time,’ Mr Rock said, to ignore her. He’s certainly waited long enough, Sebastian considered.

  ‘Whatever you say, of course,’ Elizabeth consented. ‘But we must at least offer thanks, surely? And I’m sure I don’t know where Miss Edge’s got to, do you Seb? I’ve a notion I haven’t set eyes on her this last half hour, have you?’

  ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like any of it. I’ll shake the dust from my feet,’ the old man insisted. He was very upset.

  ‘Yes, Gapa, but at the same time, after all, when we’re merely uninvited, I mean you can’t just come in and out as you please, can you? We should thank them. Don’t you feel we’d better? Come on, of course you . . . you know you do.’

  ‘Well then, where is Miss Edge?’

  ‘Powdering her nose to pretend she’s what she’s not,’ Sebastian brought out in his parson’s voice, to cheer them.

  ‘Well, you can’t chase after her in there, however you feel,’ Elizabeth protested, almost contemptuously, to the old man.

  ‘Might I make a small suggestion?’ Sebastian proposed, his own self again at last. ‘Could Liz and I finish this dance? We’d keep our eyes skinned for the guv’nor all the time.’

  The old man seemed visibly deflated, he thought. He wondered what had punctured him. No more than some second-hand foolery about Mary, he decided, satisfied Mr Rock was now in such a state of tired confusion that he would swallow, entire, any ancient guff the girls chose to hand out.

  ‘They’re fiends,’ Mr Rock protested all at once. ‘Fiends. Every single one.’

  ‘It’s the girls are, Gapa. You listen to a woman,’ Elizabeth said of herself. ‘Miss Baker and Miss Edge aren’t so bad.’

  He glared. But he was not going to admit he agreed.

  ‘So you won’t come?’ he challenged.

  ‘Why, of course. Anything you want,’ she answered in a rude, spoilt voice. ‘But one must say thank you, surely?’ she wheedled.

  You know full well I’m afraid outside, alone in the dark, the old man accused Liz, in his heart. Her carelessness for his feelings made him tired and sick, twice over.

  ‘Then I’ll seek Miss Edge for myself,’ he replied, and stamped off towards the sanctum. Sebastian made as if to follow.

  But Elizabeth put a hand on the young man’s arm. ‘Let Gapa be,’ she said. ‘It’s his pride. Don’t I know, oh so well, so often. I can tell you what’s happened. One of those horrid children, and they’re out to simply ruin our lives, darling, yours and mine, has mentioned something about his lectures. But tonight I don’t care, I’ll just not allow anything to come between. Let’s nip back for a minute. Oh, this heavenly tune. He’ll cool off. He doesn’t mean to go.’

  So they slipped back into the whirlpool to forget, to join in again. But she soon found she could not put Mr Rock out of mind, not yet, not all at once at all events.

  Edge had retired for the treat of the day, a cigarette. Because one of these made her feel she had both feet up on mantelpiece, she usually kept herself to the one, night and day. It was delicious, so bad for her heart she even had the sensation she was drunk, and this evening, in the Sanctum, as a special, exceptional indulgence, she had started on another immediately the first was finished. And had no sooner done so before she heard leather shuffled outside. Upon which, while she could hardly get so far for that heavenly lassitude she inhaled, she went over to the door, pushed it wide, and came face to face with the sage.

  Light was dark in the passage. He must have had difficulty to get along it to collect the rubber boots. And, as she swayed at his unexpected appearance, she found, without surprise, she now had nothing but pity for the old man.

  She leant, a lightweight against a doorjamb, he brittle and heavy against the wall over on the side away from her.

  ‘I’m off home,’ he announced abruptly, curious, for his part, to find he no longer seemed to hate the woman, all the go gone out of him.

  ‘Why so soon, Mr Rock?’ she asked, the butterfly gently fluttering in a vein at one of her temples, from the cigarette.

  ‘Passed my bedtime,’ he lied.

  ‘Won’t you come in for a minute?’ she invited, by the entrance to the Sanctum, then took another long draw at the weed to exquisitely drain more blood from her thin limbs.

  He made no move however.

  ‘Can’t help but worry about my cat,’ he replied, at random. ‘If I don’t get her in she’ll be out all night.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘the splendid creature.’

  ‘She comes over here such a deal,’ he added, rather petulant.

  ‘So sweet,’ the Principal agreed, still with no trace of irony, speaking as though from another existence. Mr Rock was amazed. He had never known the woman so amenable. And then he himself could hear so well, away from the music.

  ‘And has your granddaughter enjoyed it?’ Edge enquired. Ah well, he thought, day is done, this is a truce.

  ‘Liz? Of course she is older than the others.’

  ‘I saw her take the floor with Sebastian,’ the Principal said, in an approving voice.

  ‘Those two are great friends,’ Mr Rock agreed, cautiously.

  ‘I’d much like to have a little chat with you one day about that young man,’ Edge suggested, gentle, undangerously soft. The sage was not yet to be drawn, however.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, to gain time.

  With a languorous gesture, Edge took one more anaesthetising puff.

  ‘I would really appreciate your advice on Sebastian,’ she said, in the laziest voice he had heard her use.

  ‘You would?’ he countered. He almost surrendered then.

  ‘My dear sir,’ she murmured. ‘Need we be too formal the one night of our Founder’s Day Ball? I don’t really fancy so, do you?’

  There was a pause. The old man struggled with a lump in his throat. Then he let go, gave way.

  ‘She’s all I have,’ he said, given over to self pity.

  ‘She loves you,’ Miss Edge dispassionately stated.

  Mr Rock swallowed twice.

  ‘But I can’t care for him, ma’am,’ he admitted, still as if in spite of himself.

  ‘Nor me,’ the lady answered readily. They looked at each other with great understanding.

  ‘I can’t stomach parlour tricks,’ the old man elaborated, stronger.

  ‘So curiously unwise,’ Edge agreed. ‘A word which is out of fashion nowadays,’ she added. ‘The girls don’t seem to know the meaning, but there, I bless them,’ she ended.

  ‘Liz has been ill . . .’ Mr Rock began, mistaking the object, prepared to take offence at once.

  ‘Why I declare, after all,’ she soothed him. ‘I spoke of the man, the tutor, the untutored tutor, please. I trust you would not think . . .’

  ‘
My deafness,’ he explained, to cover the slip.

  ‘D’you ever have treatment?’

  ‘What’s the good. I am too old.’

  ‘Never that, good heavens no,’ she countered, through a film of weakness.

  ‘Well, there you are. I have to lump it,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘You of all men,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’ve been most fortunate in my life,’ he admitted, weak as water yet again. All this sympathy was so unexpected.

  ‘Look, come in, please. I can’t tell what we are standing here for, could you?’ she invited. ‘As a matter of fact, if you will keep our little secret, we’ve some sherry in the cupboard, Hermione and I.’

  He suddenly wondered if she could be drunk. He was not to connect the cigarette with her mood, because he had never previously seen the lady smoke. Yet it seemed he should be on guard. Nevertheless this was now a remarkable opportunity, he had to admit. He made up his mind. ‘And I, for my part,’ he said, for better or worse weakly entering the sanctum, ‘would appreciate if I could have two words with you? A domestic matter.’

  ‘My dear Mr Rock I make it my rule never to interfere.’ This was on the assumption that he could only be referring to Elizabeth.

  ‘To do with your students, ma’am,’ he announced.

  ‘Ah yes.’

  ‘They talk so.’

  ‘They do indeed,’ she languidly assented.

  ‘There must be limits, after all,’ Mr Rock argued. She slumped quickly down, in an elegant attitude, to hold her cigarette like a wand.

  ‘Where would you draw them?’ she asked, at ease.

  ‘Where would I draw the line?’ he echoed, but without conviction. Then he pulled himself together. ‘Yet there must be human decency,’ he said in a firmer voice. ‘The give and take of a civilized community,’ he said. ‘Justice,’ he ended.

  ‘Of course,’ she admitted. ‘Naturally, of course.’ This time with her first trace of malice which, however, was lost on him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a muddled way of the girls below. ‘I mean, they can go too far, can’t they?’ He was desperate.

  ‘Yes?’ she enquired.