The Go-Between (27 page)

  But if in the realm of experience I was fairly
tough, in the realm of the imagination I was not. Marian inhabited
that realm, she was indeed its chiefest ornament, the Virgin of the
Zodiac-
, she was as real to my contemplation as she was to
my experience—more real. Until I came to Brandham Hall the world of
my imagination had been peopled by fictitious beings who behaved as
I wanted them to behave; at Brandham Hall it was inhabited by real
people who had the freedom of both worlds; in the flesh they could
give my imagination what it needed, and in my solitary musings I
endowed them with certain magical qualities but did not otherwise
idealize them. I did not need to. Marian was many things to me
besides Maid Marian of the greenwood. She was a fairy princess who
had taken a fancy to a little boy, clothed him, petted him, turned
him from a laughing-stock into an accepted member of her society,
from an ugly duckling into a swan. With one wave of her wand she
had transformed him, at the cricket concert, from the youngest and
most insignificant person present to a spellbinder who had held
them all in thrall. The transfigured Leo of the last twenty-four
hours was her creation; and she had created him, I felt, because
she loved him.

  And now, again like an enchantress, she had taken it
all away and I was back where I had started from—no, much lower.
She had taken it away, not so much by her anger and harsh
words—those, on the plane of experience, I knew how to make
allowances for—as by the complete withdrawal of her favour. As the
distance increased between us, my alarm diminished but my heart
grew heavier.

  For I saw—it was relentlessly borne in upon me—that
everything she had done for me had been done with an ulterior
motive. She hadn’t been fond of me at all. She had pretended to be
fond of me so that she could inveigle me into taking messages
between her and Ted Burgess. It was all a put-up job.

  As this realization sank into me I stopped running
and began to cry. I had not been so long at school that I had lost
the power of crying; I cried a good deal and felt calmer for it. A
sense of my whereabouts returned to me: I noticed for the first
time where I was—on the causeway leading to the sluice.

  On the platform of the sluice I paused, out of
habit. No one was at work; I had forgotten it was Sunday. I should
have to go on to the farm. At once I was seized with an almost
invincible reluctance. “I’ll go no further,” I thought, “I’ll creep
back to the house and lock myself in my bedroom and perhaps they
will leave some food outside the door and I shan’t have to see
anyone.” I looked down at the water. It had sunk much lower. The
surface of the pool was still blue, but many more boulders than
before showed ghostly, corpse-like, at the bottom. And on the other
side, the shallow side, the change was greater. Before, it had been
untidy; now it was a scene of mad disorder: a tangled mass of
water-weeds, all high and dry, and sticking out from them, mounds
of yellow gravel, like bald patches on a head. The clusters of
round, thin, grey-green rushes, whose tufted tops had made me think
of an army of spearmen with pennons, were now much taller than a
man; and for a yard or more above the water-line they were coated
with a grey deposit—mud. But many had fallen over, let down by
their native element, back-broken under their own weight; they lay
pointing this way and that, all discipline gone. The army of
spearmen had been routed. Their companions in arms, the grass-green
reeds that tapered to a point like swords, had escaped the blight
and kept their colour; but they too were bent and broken.

  As I stood watching, trying to remember what the
river looked like before this happened to it, and in my agitation
lifting first one foot and then the other, like a restive horse, I
heard the letter crackle and knew I must go on.

  All the way across the fields instances of Marian’s
duplicity kept pricking me, each with its separate sting. In my
black mood I persuaded myself that every kindness she had done me,
including the present of the green suit, had had the same end in
view. She had got me out of going on the family’s afternoon
expeditions on the pretext that they bored me, whereas she really
wanted to have me free for the message business; she had invited me
to stay an extra week for the same reason and not because she
wanted me or thought that Marcus did; for the same reason, this
very afternoon, she had got rid of Marcus: it was not to do his old
nurse a kindness. Everything, it seemed, fell into place. I even
believed that but for Ted she would not have played my
accompaniments at the concert, or taken my hand or curtsied to
me.

  My tears flowed afresh and yet I could not bring
myself to hate her or even to think badly of her, for that would
have increased my wretchedness. “Nothing is ever a lady’s fault,”
Lord Trimingham had said, and to this comforting maxim I clung. But
it must be somebody’s fault: it must be Ted’s.

  The burden of my mission grew heavier, but when I
reached the cart track that climbed the hillside to the farm, I
acci-dently found a way to lighten it. My foot struck a stone; the
stone rolled; and I began to kick it, running to and fro across the
rutted surface. It became a kind of game, to kick the stone before
it stopped or fell into a rut, and to find it when it got lost in
the grass verges—no easy task, for they were as brown as it was.
Doing this I got very hot, the stone hurt my toes and took the
polish off my treasured shoes; but this was a relief to me, and I
half hoped I should injure myself too much to go on. And I had a
curious experience, almost an illusion, as though a part of me was
stationed far away, behind me, perhaps in the belt of trees beyond
the river; and from there I could see myself, a bent figure, no
bigger than a beetle, weaving to and fro across the ribbon of road.
Perhaps it was the part of me that would not take the letter. This
dual vision remained with me, dividing me from myself, until I
reached the farmyard gate.

  I had let myself go on crying because it didn’t
matter when nobody could see me, and I thought I could stop
whenever I liked. But I found that though I could check the tears,
I couldn’t control the sobbing; also I was out of breath from
running, which made it worse. So I hung about by the gate, thinking
that Ted might come out and see me. Then I would hand him the
letter and run off without speaking to him.

  But he didn’t come, and I must try to find him. It
didn’t occur to me that I should go back without delivering the
letter; my state of mind didn’t affect that obligation. So I
crossed the stackyard and knocked at the kitchen door. There was no
answer and I went in.

  He was sitting on a chair behind the table with a
gun between his knees, so absorbed that he didn’t hear me. The
muzzle was just below his mouth, the barrel was pressed against his
naked chest, and he was peering down it. He heard me and jumped
up.

  “Why,” he said, “it’s the postman!”

  He stood the gun against the table and came across
to me, with a swish of the brown corduroy trousers, which he wore
in the hottest weather. Seeing the hesitations and reservations in
my face, he said: “I oughtn’t to be like this when callers come,
but I was that hot. Do you mind? Shall I put a shirt on? There are
no ladies present.”

  One of the ways he had of winning me was by
deferring to me.

  “N-no,” I began to say, but a hiccup interrupted the
word.

  He looked at me closely, much as he had looked down
the barrel of his gun.

  “Why, you’ve been crying!” he said. “You oughtn’t to
be crying at your age.” I couldn’t tell if he meant I was too old
or too young to cry. “Now what’s the matter? Somebody’s been
upsetting you—a woman, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  At that I began to cry again, whereupon he whipped a
handkerchief out of his pocket and before I could protest began to
wipe my eyes. Oddly enough, I didn’t mind his doing this; I had an
instinct that, unlike the people of my own class, he wouldn’t think
the worse of me for crying.

  My tears had ceased to flow and I felt calmer. “Now
what can we do to cheer you up?” he said. “Would you like to see
Smiler and her foal?”

  “N-no, thank you.”

  “Would you like to slide down the stack? I’ve put
some more straw under the drop.”

  “No, thank you.”

  He looked round the room, evidently trying to think
of something else that might distract me. “Would you like to take
my gun outside and let it off?” he asked persuasively. “I was just
going to clean it, but I can do that afterwards.”

  I shook my head. I wouldn’t fall in with anything he
proposed.

  “Why not?” he said. “You’ve got to start some time.
It kicks, but it wouldn’t hurt you half as much as that catch you
held. Ah, that was a beauty, that was. I haven’t forgiven you
yet.”

  At the reference to my catch something gave in me
and I felt more myself.

  “Well, would you like to come out and see me shoot
something?” he suggested, as if my salvation lay in shooting.
“There’s some old rooks round here that could do with a
peppering.”

  I couldn’t go on saying no, and followed him out
into the stackyard. For some reason I imagined that shooting was a
long business, a matter of patient waiting for some psychological
moment, but no sooner were we outside the door than the gun went to
his shoulder.

  The bang took me completely by surprise. It
frightened me out of my wits, which was perhaps the best thing that
could have happened to me. Half dazed, I watched the bird twirl
slowly down to earth a few yards from us. “Well, that’s the end of
him,” said Ted, and taking it by the claws, he so alive, the bird
so dead, he threw it into a bed of nettles. Overhead sounded a
flurried, indignant outcry. I looked up: the rooks were wheeling
about the sky, growing more distant every moment. “They won’t come
back in a hurry,” Ted remarked. “They’re artful, they are. I was
lucky to get that one.”

  “Do you ever miss?” I asked.

  “Good Lord, yes, but I’m a pretty good shot, though
I say it. Now, would you like to see me clean the gun?”

  No one is quite the same after a loud bang as before
it: I went back into the kitchen a different person. My grief had
changed to sulkiness and self-pity, a sure sign of recovery. The
deed of blood had somehow sealed a covenant between us, drawn us
together by some ancient, sacrificial rite.

  “Now you take this cleaning-rod,” he said, “and this
bit of four-by-two”—picking up a piece of frayed, white, oily
rag—”and you thread it through the eye of this cleaning-rod, same
as you would a needle.” Screwing his eyes up, for the kitchen was
not well lighted, he suited the action to the word. The slightest
movement brought into play the muscles of his forearms; they moved
in ridges and hollows from a knot above his elbow, like pistons
working from a cylinder. “And then you press it down the breech,
like this, and you’ll be surprised how dirty it comes out.” He
pushed the wire rod up and down several times. “There, didn’t I say
it would be dirty?” he exclaimed, triumphantly showing me the rag,
which was filthy enough to satisfy one’s extremest expectations.
“But the barrel’ll be quite clean now, you look—and then look
through the other, which I haven’t cleaned. That’ll show you.” He
spoke as if I had denied there would be a difference. Taking the
gun to the window, he made me look through it. He held it level
with one hand; I could hardly hold it with two, resting the other
under the barrel. But I got a strange thrill from the contact, from
feeling the butt press against my shoulder and the steel cold
against my palm.

  “Put your head lower if you can,” he said, “and get
the sight between the barrels; then you can think you’re taking a
real shot.”

  I did so, and the sense of power was intensified. I
devoted to destruction several objects that I could see through the
kitchen window, then slowly swung the muzzle round, picking out
things I might blow to pieces in the room itself, until at last it
pointed straight at Ted.

  “Hi, you mustn’t do that,” he said, “that’s against
the rules. Never point a gun at anybody, even when it isn’t loaded.
“

  Already feeling almost a murderer, I hastily handed
the gun back to him.

  “Now I’ll just clean the other barrel,” he said,
“and then I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

  Should I accept his offer? Tea would be waiting for
me at Brandham Hall.... I saw his cricket bat standing in a corner,
and to gain time I said:

  “You ought to oil your bat, too.”

  It was rather pleasant to give instructions after
receiving so many.

  “Thanks for reminding me. I shall want it again on
Saturday.”

  “May I oil it for you?” I asked.

  “Of course you can. It’s an old one, but it does
drive. Yesterday was my top score. I don’t suppose I’ll ever make
another fifty.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not if you’re about.”

  I laughed at this. “Lord Trimingham gave me the ball
to keep,” I said, wondering if he would turn pale at the name; but
he only said:

  “I’ll put the kettle on in the scullery. It’s too
hot for a fire here. I’ll get the linseed oil.”

  I handled the bat as reverently as if it had been
the bow of Ulysses, and wondered which of the bruises on its
much-scarred surface had been caused by the stroke I caught him
off. The oil came in an alien container: “Price’s Cycle Axle Oil”
was printed on the tin, and there was a picture of a lady and a
gentleman bicycling gaily along a country road, looking at me and
at the future with surprised but pleased and confident
expressions.

  I poured a little oil on the middle of the bat and
began to work it in gently with my fingers; the wood seemed to
drink it thirstily and gratefully, as if it too was suffering from
the drought. The rhythmic rubbing half soothed and half excited me;
it seemed to have a ritual significance, as if I was rubbing out my
own bruises, as if the new strength I was putting into the bat
would pass into its owner. I was thinking more normally now: I
belonged to the present, not to a ruined past and a menacing
future. Or so I felt.