The Ballroom (21 page)

When John had finished, he took his time, shaking himself off, tucking himself back in. There had been a decent amount. He had needed it after all.

H
E COULD NOT
think of it, and yet he could think of little else. It colonized his thoughts. Had anyone else seen? He didn’t think so, but it was impossible to tell.

Following the Sports Day there was to be a Coronation Tea, and Charles’s plan had been to debut ‘Alexander’ while the patients were eating; there was a last rehearsal scheduled for three o’clock. But as soon as he entered the room Charles saw that the meeting was ill judged: half of the players were missing, and those that were there were sweaty and hectic from their exertions. Goffin arrived still wearing his athletics gear – his great thighs on flagrant display.

Trying to keep the atmosphere light, trying to quash the sight that threatened to insert itself continually in front of his eyes, Charles smiled as he brought out the music and handed it around. ‘Just the thing for this sort of weather!’ he said. ‘They say the negroes play it best,’ he attempted an American accent, ‘
down in New Orleans!
’

There was a strange, strained silence at this last, until Goffin, seated to Charles’s left, his trumpet resting against one of those thighs, snickered, ‘Yes, well, it helps if you’re a nigger, I suppose.’

Charles felt his skin flare, and there were several (perhaps more than several if he was honest) answering snickers from the rest of the company. He tried a laugh to show he had a sense of humour too, but it sounded hollow and peevish.

‘Actually,’ he said, after the band had stumbled once through the piece, ‘I’m not feeling at all well. I’ve a headache from the heat. All this syncopation is making me a little queasy. I think it might be better to stick with something simple. The Trio from
Pomp and Circumstance
will do.’

And so it had been. A steady two-four time signature. Elgar for the Coronation Tea.

Later, when the patients had been put to bed, the staff gathered in their quarters, a few bottles of ale were opened and the new King and Queen were toasted once more. It was nine o’clock and bright as noon outside. The grey of the day had given way to a fine evening, and a jostling little group of the younger men had formed, readying themselves to walk out across the fields to the pub in Sharston village.

‘Fuller! Hey, Fuller!’

Charles looked up.

‘Are you coming with us then?’

It was Goffin, washed now and changed from his sports kit into a pale cotton suit. A high colour to his cheeks, grinning as though nothing untoward had occurred, giving off the air that young men do when they have tasted alcohol and know there is more to come. Charles felt his cheeks sting all over again. He gave a wave. ‘Thank you. I have some work to do.’

He picked up his
Times
and turned to the back pages, where the paper had recently begun to run a column entitled ‘Deaths by Heat’.

Where was the shy young man who had been so happy to be included in the band? Gone. Gone in the heat of athletic triumph and a couple of ales. And really, thought Charles, it was disputable whether the men deserved their victory, whether they had won after all. He supposed it was his fault if there had been an injustice. The patients had been winning, but he had blown his whistle too soon. Confusion had reigned. Perhaps he should have been tougher, rather than declaring the victory for the staff. But tensions were high, and Brandt was a threatening fellow at best. It had seemed the orderly, sensible thing to do.

He looked up and saw Goffin standing before him, his face a little blurry with drink and heat. ‘You sure?’ He waved a bottle of ale in Charles’s face.

‘Yes. Thank you. I have, as I said, some work to do.’ Charles felt brittle suddenly, as though he might crack.

‘Ahh, but …’ Goffin looked a little unsteady on his feet. ‘Seems a shame. Shaaame to be working on an evening like this.’ He waved a hand towards the windows.

‘Yes, well,’ Charles said. ‘There we are.’

As he mounted the stairs to his room, he could hear the young men singing:

Inside his quarters the sun still blared through the window, relentless. Outside, it fell on the scorched grass. It was an official heatwave now, twenty days straight without proper rain (the ragged sprinkling of that morning could hardly be counted). He longed for darkness, for shadow. He reached up, prodding uselessly at his window, even though he knew it would not open far.

He could see Goffin and the clutch of men below, pushing and ragging each other as they headed out over the grounds. A couple of them had obviously raided the hay stores and fashioned rude torches, which were burning brightly as they walked, casting long dancing shadows behind them. Charles flinched at the sight; it looked as though giants were abroad.

Midsummer Night, but he did not feel any joy – everything felt upside down. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror, saw that despite a hurried washing earlier in the day vestiges of his clown make-up still clung to his skin. He bent to his basin and scrubbed until the stains were gone and his face was raw, then closed the curtains a little way, unthreaded his laces and sat on the edge of his bed. He pulled
The Times
listlessly towards him, tugging at his collar as he read that evening’s offering in ‘Deaths by Heat’: a young couple whose motor car had skidded on melted tarmac and ended their days impaled on railings. He was glad he had not been the doctor at that particular scene. He leafed through the paper for some light relief but found none: industrial unrest was growing, coal heavers and dockers were on strike. Seamen had struck again to join them. Home Secretary Churchill would have his hands full.

Where was Churchill then, right at this moment? Not stuck in a tiny room, alone and musing. He would be out. At his club perhaps, relaxing after the exertions of the day, surrounded by the great and the good, cigar in one hand, and in the other a glass of champagne, or hock, or something that Charles had never heard of but Churchill knew intimately, a French white, crisp and clean, to wash away the mugginess of the day. He would be taking the bottle himself, topping up his companions’ glasses. Holding forth. Toasting the King.

And the others, in the pub in Sharston? Their laughing faces, fists clinking tankards of frothing ale. He should have gone, it was Midsummer Night after all, a time to be abroad. It would have been the best thing to do. Show there were no hard feelings. Make sure they did not think him a prig. But the day had stripped him somehow.

It helps if you’re a nigger, I suppose.
He drew Goffin’s comment forth like a splinter from beneath his skin.

What did he mean? Did he mean Charles was a Negro for wanting to listen to the music and to play it?

1. Goffin is right. I should never have done it. Never have gone to Spence’s and taken this initiative. To like such music is evidence of weakness, of desire for regression to the state of an ape.
   
2. This may be true, but then, what of the young man in Spence’s? He loves the music, and he is as far from a Negro as it is possible to be.
   
3. I myself couldn’t appear less like a Negro. Except for the red parts, my reflection grows more pasty every day.
   

The thing he wished, most fervently of all, was to see the young man in Spence’s again, to step into the cool of the shop, feel his propinquity, catch his oxygenated scent. The easy way he played. His lightness. What wouldn’t he give for a draught of that lightness now?

Had they wanted him to go with them, those men at the pub, or were they simply being nice? Or worse – had they wished to humiliate him further? And why could he not tell the difference?

And Mulligan.
Mulligan.
After all he had done for him: the music, the dances, the moving him to work in the fields; all the hope he had placed in his recovery.

Good God.

Charles groaned. Finally, he gave way to it. The memory. The sight of the Irishman’s organ: red-tipped, half engorged, the pale arc of liquid soaking his boots. He peered down at them now. He had rinsed them thoroughly; there was no sign of the man’s depredations there, but the stain was not to the leather. It had been a Saturnal, out there on the cricket field. Not just Mulligan, but Riley too, wearing that ludicrous green crown, ordering his troops like the Lord of Misrule. Anger welled within him and he understood:
that
was why he had blown his whistle. Mulligan’s strength, the puckish grin on Riley’s face – they should not be allowed.

Let them.

Let Riley have his temporary Kingship. Let him order his ragged subjects. Let Mulligan have his moment in the sun. It would not last for long. Was not the Lord of Misrule allowed to play his pranks only for a few brief hours or days? Did he not then pass before his time to a violent death? Whether by his own or another’s hand? Whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows-tree?

Oh! Charles lowered his head to his hands. What morbid fancies was he prey to?

It was this heat! This heat was
intolerable.
He had to get a grip. On himself. On his paper. His paper! The Society were meeting next month. There was always a chance that Churchill might be present, if his hands were not already too full with recalcitrant dockers and other malcontents. What on earth did they want to
strike
for anyway? He could hardly think of anything more exhausting.

He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, but he was not tired. A hectic energy invaded his limbs. He swung himself up and over to his desk, brought out his papers and shuffled through them until he reached Mulligan’s notes. There were pages of sketches there: Mulligan, his shirt removed, that particular, maddening hinge where the torso met the groin.

The man’s member, held in his hands. The red, slightly swollen tip. His penis. His
cock.
Charles pushed the pictures away. The man was filthy. Soiled. Everything was soiled. The season, which had seemed to hold so much, curdling as though a canker had entered a fruit.
Midsummer Night.

Nothing was as simple as it seemed.

A sound at his shoulder. Charles looked up, startled.

Someone was beside him. Peering over his shoulder.

Churchill.
The great man was
here
.

‘
Tell me about him.
’ Churchill pointed with a stubby finger at the picture of Mulligan. ‘
He’s a fine specimen. He interests me.
’

‘
I – he – he is …
’ Charles’s voice spluttered. ‘
He is a delinquent, sir.
’

‘
I see. And this is a man, this is a man you wished to make your argument for? For segregation? For the improving benefits of music?
’ Churchill shook his head incredulously. ‘
This is the man you hoped would improve? Sedition, Fuller, lurks in the Celt! We cannot weed it out.
’

‘
Yes.
’ Charles stared mournfully at his papers. ‘
Yes, I see.
’

Churchill took a large puff of his cigar and began pacing up and down the tiny room, one hand on his lapel, the other waving in the air, punctuating his speech. ‘
Imagine, Fuller, just imagine if Mulligan were to choose a mate in here. You must entertain it. It is the logical extrapolation of the future you propose. If men like Mulligan believe their right to choose a mate and procreate remains inalienable, what dangers are posed to the race? Read this, Fuller!
’ He jabbed his cigar at the pamphlet on the corner of Charles’s desk. ‘
If you wish to see sense, read this!
’

Charles pulled the pamphlet gingerly over towards him. He opened it at random and read a page:

Since October, 1899, I have been performing an operation known as vasectomy, which consists of ligating and resecting a small portion of the vas deferens. This operation is indeed very simple and easy to perform. I do it without administering an anesthetic either general or local. It requires about three minutes’ time to perform the operation and the subject returns to his work immediately, suffering no inconvenience, and is in no way impaired for his pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, but is effectively sterilized. I have been doing this operation for over nine years. I have two hundred and thirty-six cases that have afforded splendid opportunity for post-operative observation and I have never seen any unfavorable symptom.

Charles put his head to the desk, breathing wood and resin and ink. There was no more sound from Churchill. He looked up. Thank God, the man had disappeared.

Exhaustion. He had hardly slept properly in weeks. And the heat. His nerves were strained to breaking.

He needed sustenance. He had been adrift from the great world for far too long. Next month was Major Leonard Darwin’s Inaugural Address; it was to be held at the meeting rooms of the Eugenics Society in London and nothing – not even the train tracks melting and warping in the heat – would keep him from being there.

And Mulligan?

Charles took a last look at his sketches before tearing them in two.

Sedition lurks in the Celt.

He would have to punish Mulligan properly this time. He had been far too lenient for far too long.

I
T HAD COME
, as he had known it would. Not in a summoning, nor in a visit to the doctor’s office, but quietly, on a Friday evening when they were lined up for the dance. Just a shaking of the head, a pushing back from the line.

‘Not you, Mulligan. Not you, Riley.’

John stared at the attendant. ‘How long for?’

The man shrugged.

John turned, hands in his armpits to still them, or he would have taken a swipe at the man, and went and stood by the canary’s cage, breathing hard, only looking up as the other men filed out.