Fielding Gray

by Simon Raven

  'Gurkhas,' Captain Detterling said languidly. They're not really quite black, you know.'

  'Perhaps,' said Peter, 'he wanted to help with the fighting. He seems to be a conscientious man.'

  'Conscientious?' the Senior Usher snorted. 'He's as red as Detterling's ridiculous trousers.'

  'Oh I say, sir.'

  'Look forward rather than back, indeed. Before you can turn round, he'll have that college changed into an institute. He'll put a cafeteria in Hall, he'll sell the port to endow bursaries for the sons of dustmen, and he'll grow cabbages on the front lawn.'

  'As it happens,' said Somerset Lloyd-James. 'he comes of a very good family. They were Hereditary Constables and Knights Banneret of Reculver Castle. Hence their name.'

  'Much comfort that'll be to Gray here when his college has been turned into a night school.'

  The Senior Usher sailed on his way and Detterling trailed off behind him. Peter, Somerset and I walked slowly down the steps on to the cricket ground and then towards the square at its centre. The crowd on the terrace grew thinner and the sun was low.

  'The head man,' said Peter after a long pause, 'was right about one thing. The hungry must be fed and the homeless sheltered. Forget the guilt, as I propose to, and there is still a lot to be done.'

  'What will you do, Peter? ' I said.

  'I shall grow food.'

  'And you, Somerset?'

  'I shall advise people for their own good,' said Lloyd-James coolly. 'Giving advice is going to be very much the thing to do, 1 shall be an expert in an age of experts.'

  'What will you be expert about?'

  'Whatever people think they are most concerned about.'

  Somerset was always slow to commit himself.

  'And what,' said Peter Morrison, 'are you going to do. Fielding? Your turn.'

  'You heard me say. I want to be a don.'

  'What sort of don?'

  'A wining and dining don. A witty, worldly, comfortable don.'

  'All that,' said Peter, 'is incidental. What will be at the centre of it?'

  Too soon to know.'

  'I disagree. To me, fertility is the central object, fertility for my land - it will be mine now Alastair is dead - and also for myself. To Somerset, if I am not mistaken, the central object is power. What, Fielding, is yours? '

  A bell jangled in the distance.

  'I must go and count heads,' said Lloyd-James.

  'So must we ... Am I to have an answer, Fielding?'

  'I think ... that I want truth.'

  'A tall order?'

  'Not about everything. Only in my own small way. In some small corner I shall try to establish the truth.'

  'Limited and limiting,' said Lloyd-James.

  'Satisfying. If only to myself.'

  Peter said nothing but nodded carefully. Then we separated. Lloyd-James to assist at adsum in his House, Peter and I to do the same office in ours.

  This is a story of promise and betrayal. I am writing it, some ten years after it was enacted, on the island of Santa Kytherea, in a small white house between the mountains and the sea. I am doing so, first because there is very little else to do (the routine duties of the Squadron will be quite adequately supervised by Sergeant-Major Bunce), and secondly because I wish to establish, once and for all, what went wrong in that summer of 1945. 'Promise and betrayal.' I have written above, implying that I was the golden boy who received the traitor's kiss. But was it really like that? And if so, what, exactly, was promised, and who or what betrayed?

  First things first. How did it all begin?

  I have already described Christopher. Imagine him. then, on a winter's afternoon, running home from the Fives Courts: cheeks flushed, stockings down over ankles, gym shoes spattered with mud, shorts (because of clothes rationing) noticeably outgrown. It is nearly tea lime and it is just getting dark. I am coming the other way, clumping along in gum-boots, having spent the afternoon drearily gardening (to help the War Effort). Our paths meet where we must both turn off for our House. Christopher waves, smiles, runs on ahead, and I just stand there, while God knows what desires are stirred inside me. And yet this was not lust - I swear it. I had had a vision, after three hours of grinding tedium among oafish and tetchy boys I had seen someone graceful and kind and gay, someone, moreover, who had waved me a share of his grace, smiled me a portion of his gaiety, as he passed in the evening light.

  And that was how it all began, in December 1944, about five months before the day of the Memorial Service. And in the meantime? Outwardly just good friends, as the papers say, playing our games and gossiping our gossip, much as we always had since we first met as new boys some years before; but inwardly, as far as I was concerned, there was now a deep longing to protect and to cherish, to fondle (but only as a comforter) and (as a brother) to embrace. That smile had roused my soul. But how was I to tell Christopher? And what would he reply?

  The problem was the more difficult as Christopher was a creature of very little brain. This is not to say that he was half-witted; on an everyday level he managed his affairs competently enough; but he was a boy of very conventional outlook and not pervious to ideas or books. To embark on an exegesis of Platonic love (for such this surely was), its history and implications, was therefore impossible. He would have thought I was mad. On the other hand, the fact that he was so conventional did hold out a slight hope; for convention at our school took in. as an abiding if scarcely a wholesome clement in school life, the notion of the 'pash' which any boy might entertain for another, Usually a younger one. With some such notion Christopher was undoubtedly familiar. But yet again, the concept of a 'pash' was so set around with petty guilt and assorted silliness that this was not at all the level on which I wanted to proceed. 'Christopher. I've got a pash on you.' No, definitely no. Whatever it was I felt for Christopher, love Platonic or love Romantic, agape, cros or caritas, it was altogether too serious to be demeaned by the idiom of the lower fourth.

  Yet in the end everything turned out much easier than I had thought possible. For the truth is that Christopher had a sensibility (if not an intelligence) which I had underrated; and on the evening of the memorial service, after five months of mere cerebration on my part, he simply took the initiative himself.

  Despite the severity of the Headmaster's sermon, he had proclaimed a modest concession in honour of victory. After seven o'clock adsum there would be no Sunday prep, and each House might conduct its own celebration, in such manner as seemed fit to its master. In our House, the Headmaster's own, a seemly sing-song was ordained. I shall never know quite how it happened, but at some point this innocent entertainment suddenly took on a grotesque, a Luperealian licence. One moment we were all singing 'The Lincolnshire Poacher'; the next - memory recalls no interval - the monitors' gramophone was playing 'Jealousy', and the elder half of the House was coupled with the younger in a shambling, sweaty tango. Even Peter Morrison, enveloping his study fag, was performing elephantine steps across the dining-room floor. I myself was dancing with a pert and pretty little new boy, who was writhing from his hips as if his life depended on it - when a hand descended on his shoulder, there was a gruff 'Excuse me', and Christopher had taken his place.

  'What's happened to everyone?' I said.

  'I don't know, but it's all right. It's because the war's over. Just this once, it's all right.'

  Although he did not come close, he gripped my hand and my shoulder very tight.

  'All right for you being the girl?' I said fatuously.

  This he ignored.

  'Your hair's in your eyes,' he said.

  He let go my hand and moved his own towards my forehead.

  'Auburn,' he said oddly. 'That's the word, isn't it? Auburn.' The music stopped and he quickly withdrew his hand, Someone put on 'The Girl in the Alice Blue Gown', to which we now began to waltz decorously. Christopher was a good dancer, light, yielding, following without effort as no doubt he would have led. But the choice of record was a bad one and dispelled the sat
yr spirit that had briefly descended. Peter Morrison released his study fag, stopped the music, banged on the panelling for silence.

  'Tidy up for prayers,' he called, dismissing the incident for ever, 'and look sharp about it. The head man will be through in ten minutes.' So that's that, I thought. 'Just this once, it's all right... Your hair ... auburn.' And then the music stopped.

  But late that night, as Christopher and I were walking upstairs to bed, I felt the back of his hand brushing against mine and then his fingers curling round my own. Together we walked down the long row of cubicles, until we reached his. It was quite dark. Everyone else was asleep, or should have been, for these were junior cubicles, of which we had joint charge, and the occupants had been sent to bed two hours ago. In any case, provided we were quiet no one would realize if we both went into Christopher's cubicle; no one would interfere. The darkness was all ours and we knew it; and knowing it squeezed hands the tighter - and said good night.

  For Christopher I cannot answer. For myself, it was fear which made me leave him when I did. I only wanted to be with him and hold him; but this might lead to other desires, on his part too, perhaps, and these, I thought, might end by provoking his disgust. That night outside his cubicle I loved him so much that the thought of incurring his anger or distaste made me sick with terror. What did he want? He gave no sign, I could not tell, I must not gamble; so I let go his hand and slunk away, cursing my timid heart, to my solitary school bed.

  Early in June I made a hundred against Eton on our own ground, a triumph which was all the sweeter as Christopher had been batting opposite me much of the time, himself making a very decent 47. The occasion was marred, however, by the presence of my parents. When I was out I put on my blue 1st XI cricket blazer and went to join them; and hardly had I sat down before my father started getting at me. No congratulations about my century, just grinding and grudging ill humour from the moment he saw me. Since I might have been spending the time with Christopher, it was very hard to bear with.

  'All that blue,' said my father, eyeing my blazer and costing it to the nearest sixpence: 'anyone would think you were playing for the 'Varsity at Lord's.'

  'And so he might,' my mother said, 'if he goes on like this.' She paused and twitched slightly. 'You never made a hundred,' she said; 'you never even played for the first eleven.'

  'The standard was higher in my time,' said my father, part whining, part vicious. 'In those days the eleven played like grown men. This is just boys' stuff.'

  'Old Frank,' I told him, referring to the retired professional who still attended every match, 'says this is one of the strongest elevens he can remember. Frank was here in your time, I think?'

  'Frank's getting too senile to judge properly. I'm telling you, in my day we had teams of men. Men who would have been serving their country in time of war, not playing games at school.'

  The war's over,' said mama.

  'Not in the East.'

  'I shall do my time in the Army,' I said, 'when and as they call me.'

  'When all the fighting's done.'

  My father had served in the recent war with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and had been released early as his business was of industrial importance.

  'What does the Headmaster think?' said mama nervously. 'Will you have to go into the Army before or after you go up to Lancaster?'

  'No one knows yet.'

  'And what's so certain,' said father, 'about him going up to Lancaster?'

  'But, Jack, he has a scholarship ... And if he makes it into a better scholarship next spring...'

  'Scholarships don't pay for everything. Who finds the difference?'

  'If you're going to be like this, why did you decide that Fielding could stay on at school another year?'

  'Because that Headmaster of his gave me some drinks and got round me. Said some very flattering things, I must say ... So I gave my word, that my son would be needing his place here for another year, and I shan't go back on it.'

  'Then why not make the best of it?' said mother.

  'So I shall - for another year. If they don't call him up before.' said father gleefully.

  'They won't,' I said. 'That much at least is certain. As a candidate for a further University award, I am deferred at my headmaster's request until August 1946.'

  'Very nice too,' said father. 'Dreaming about Latin and Greek while others do the fighting. But hear this. After you leave this school. I'm not paying for any more Latin and Greek. If, if I send you to Cambridge, it'll be to do something useful.'

  And so on. The usual bullying by my father, the usual pathetic or ill timed remonstrance from my mother, the usual pouts, sulks and flashes of open revolt from me. After a time Peter Morrison, who was a great favourite with my mother, came up to pay his respects.

  'Not playing yourself?' said my father brutally.

  Peter, who was a goodish player and had only just failed to get a place, was used to my father and took this very well.

  'Too good a side for me,' he said.

  'But I've just been telling him' - my father stabbed a bitten finger nail at me - 'this is children's stuff. If any of 'em were worth anything, they'd have been off at the war by now. Like me.'

  At this point I couldn't bear it any more. I made up some lie about having to help, because of shortage of staff, with the arrangements for tea; then hurried away, ignoring Peter's reproachful look. Christopher was sitting at the back of the scoring box, and when I sat down beside him, he pressed his knee hard against mine. The white flannels he wore were soft and warm and very slightly damp with sweat. The contact, so childish and innocent, was of a sensuality poignant beyond desire. Thigh close against dewy flannelled thigh, chaste yet rapturous, we sat through ten minutes of indifferent batting and an eternity of love.

  'Leaving me and your mother like that,' my father said before they left the next day: 'no bloody manners any more than you've got guts.'

  But it would have taken more than my parents' visit to spoil that time of happiness. Dispassionate memory records that the June of 1945 was a damp, cloudy month; but another kind of memory can recall only blue, bright mornings and golden afternoons.

  One such morning. Early morning school: Catullus,

  'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' boomed the Senior Usher,

  'Rumoresque senum severiorum

  Omnes unius aestimemus assis ... Now, those verse translations I asked you to make... Gray.'

  'Come, Lesbia, let us live and love

  And at a farthing's worth we'll prove

  The sour talk of crabbed old men.

  The suns which set can rise again:

  But we, once set is our brief light.

  Must sleep an everlasting night.

  Give me a thousand kisses, all your store,

  And then a hundred, then a thousand more—'

  '—Thank you, that will do. I gather you approve the sentiment?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'So, with qualifications, do I. This poem states briefly and without compromise the essentials of the Fagan position. A dignified if melancholy acceptance of the extinction which will follow death, accompanied by a whole-hearted relish of the available consolations.'

  'And the qualifications you have, sir? Are any needed?'

  'Yes. Catullus was dead and buried some fifty years before the birth of Christ. Christianity proposes a different ethic.'

  Ah.

  'It's not... compulsory ... to accept the Christian ethic, sir. Lots of prominent men in the last two thousand years have rejected it.'

  'But this school. Gray' - dryly and not unkindly - 'does accept it. Christianity has the official sanction here. Individuals may have their own ideas, but they must nevertheless conform with the official ones. It is a condition of belonging.'

  'And if this condition is based on what is doubtful or untrue, sir?'

  'You are only asked to conform. Not to believe.'

  The Sixth Form stirred, scenting heresy in high places.

 
'But why conform,' I insisted, 'if one does not believe?'

  'It is convenient to run this institution, any institution for that matter, on certain assumptions. One assumption here, as enjoined by our founder, is that Christ was the Son of God and that the morality which he preached is therefore binding. This is the basis of our rule. We cannot compel you to believe in it, indeed many of us would not wish to, but we can and must compel you to act by it. Otherwise our whole careful structure will fall apart. So for our purposes. Gray, you should behave, not as though you were heir to perpetual night, but as though you had an immortal soul which you may not jeopardize by showering your kisses upon Lesbia. Unless, that is, you care to marry her first.'

  And suppose I wanted to shower my kisses upon Christopher? One thing was certain from what I had read: Catullus ('dead and buried some fifty years before the birth of Christ') would have seen no objection.

  And one such afternoon. In the squash courts with Christopher. Squash was not much played in the summer, so we had the place to ourselves. After the game, a cold shower. Christopher under his shower (the drops clinging to the light fair hairs on his legs) displaying the whole length of his body. The young Bacchus ... no, the young Apollo. Christ, how beautiful.

  But Christopher leaving the shower as soon as its function is done. Christopher drying himself, without undue haste, certainly, but without lingering. Christopher dressed. Sun beating through the skylight.

  This place is like an oven. Let's go.'

  'Christopher ..

  'We'll be late for tea. Let's go.'

  But as we walked up the hill, he put his hand in my arm, ran it down to hold my hand for a few paces, then brought it back to the inside of my elbow.

  'Christopher ... When you still did Latin, did you get as far as Catullus?'

  'No, Fielding.'

  'Do you know what he wrote about?'

  'No.'

  'Passion.'

  Christopher looked puzzled.