The Go-Between (33 page)

  We were turning into the drive, with an idea of
going down into the village, when we saw a telegraph boy, complete
with red-piped uniform, pillbox hat, and scarlet bicycle, pedalling
vigorously towards us. My mind was so full of bicycles that his
seemed like a materialization, and its colour somehow a
mistake.

  “A telegram!” we both exclaimed, and Marcus
signalled to the boy to stop. I was so sure the telegram was for me
that I held my hand out for it.

  “Maudsley?” queried the boy cheekily.

  “
Mr
. Maudsley,” Marcus corrected him. I
withdrew my hand and fixed my eyes on Marcus’s face, wondering how
he would take the news; for I was still sure the telegram was from
Mother.

  Marcus opened it. “It’s only Marian,” he said, as if
a telegram from her hardly counted, “to say she’s coming by the
late train tomorrow. Mama told her she hadn’t given herself time
for all her shopping. I expect she’s staying on to buy your
bicycle. Now let’s go and déranger the villagers— sales types!”

  How shortsighted I had been, I thought, to expect my
mother to wire! Of course she wouldn’t. A telegram cost sixpence
and we had to count our sixpences. A letter summoning me would come
tomorrow, if not by the first post, by the second. Another
reprieve, another carefree day, in body at Brandham Hall, in heart
at home.

  Wednesday morning brought
Punch
. I had to
bide my time listening to the chuckles of my elders, which seemed
more unrestrained now that Mrs. Maudsley was not there; but at last
I got possession of it. I opened it with caution, for (as Marcus
had discovered) I could not always see a joke and sometimes had to
have it explained to me by an older person, like a sum. So that
when I did see one on my own, it was a double triumph. To my
delight, the paper was full of references to the heat: they made my
single experience seem a universal one. Here was the sun, “The Real
Scorcher” (there were, gratifyingly, several jokes about bicycles),
bending low over the handlebars, curly rays coming out of his head,
a sultry smile on his face; and in the background Mr. Punch under
an umbrella, mopping his brow, while Dog Toby, with his tongue
hanging out, wilted behind him.

  I laughed loudly and ostentatiously, meaning to be
heard, for it is something to have seen a joke. But what was this,
under the heading “A Great Thought for Every Day in the Year”?

  “De Wet, having been frequently routed by Lord
Methuen, has succeeded in cutting the railway at three points”—and
there was more in the same strain, sneers at our conduct of the
war. Was this funny? I didn’t think so—I thought it unpatriotic, as
perhaps it would be thought today. I always had a side, sometimes
several sides, and now my side was England.

  I was horrified, and, when opportunity offered, with
due disgust I showed the offending passage to Lord Trimingham.

  To my chagrin and surprise, he laughed and laughed.
I did not presume to criticize him, but surely this was too much?
He, a veteran of the war, to think it funny to be made fun of! To
laugh when the side he had represented so gallantly and at such
cost to himself was ridiculed! I couldn’t make it out.

  But Wednesday morning did not bring a letter from my
mother. I was not dismayed, however. On the contrary, I felt as if
all the certitude that had been spread over the last twenty-four
hours was gathering into a bomb that would explode at tea-time.
Meanwhile, how should I spend the day? It was already very hot; my
meteorological awareness, sharpened by practice into a sixth sense,
foretold a record. Several times that morning I had to stop myself
from going down to the game larder and nibbling at the unripe fruit
of knowledge.

  This would be my last day at Brandham, unless they
wanted me to stay till Friday, as a compromise, in which case, I
told myself, I might get the presents after all, though in a
hole-and-corner fashion and without the glory of a cake. I rather
hoped they would, for the thought of the bicycle still sometimes
pierced the perfect armour of my made-up mind.

  “Have you forgotten anything?” This was a question
my mother always asked when I was going to school, or going
anywhere, though I went about so little. “Is there anyone you ought
to
thank
?” was another of her questions.

  The people I ought to thank could all be thanked
tomorrow or whichever day I left—Marian, Marcus, my host and
hostess, and the servants. In imagination I saw myself thanking
them, thanking them for having me. I might have to thank them for
the presents, too. Thanks were something you kept till the last
moment; they were the very essence of farewell, and thinking of
them brought departure nearer. Good-bye, Brandham! Was there anyone
else?

  Then I remembered Ted. I didn’t think I had much to
thank him for, but he had written me a letter, and it was on the
cards that he was going to enlist. The thought of this still
troubled me. I ought to say good-bye to him.

  It wouldn’t take long, but how could I dispose of
Marcus? I couldn’t say good-bye to Ted with Marcus there. I had an
idea.

  Mother had consented to my bathing, but I had never
bathed because, soon after her permission came, the river above the
sluice had sunk so low it was too shallow even for a non-swimmer.
The men of the party still sometimes went down to the pool below
the sluice; but shrunken though it was, it was too deep for me.

  “Marcus,” I said, “il est très ennuyeux, mais—”
French failed me.

  “Spit it out in English if it’s easier,” said Marcus
kindly. “It’s very boring, but—”

  “Ted Burgess told me he’d give me a swimming
lesson,” I said rapidly. This wasn’t true, but I had heard so many
lies, and lying is infectious; besides he had said he would do
anything to make “it” worth my while. I explained why I should need
grown-up assistance.

  “It will only take un petit quart d’heure,” I wound
up, pleased with this.

  “Would you desert me?” said Marcus, tragically.

  “But you deserted me,” I argued, “when you went to
Nannie Robson’s.”

  “Yes, but that’s
different
. She’s my old
nurse and he...” I didn’t know the epithet, but it sounded
unprintable. “Well, don’t let him drown you.”

  “Oh no,” I answered, poised for flight.

  “I shan’t mind if you drown him,” Marcus said. He
had a habit of speaking badly of people, especially those of a
lower social status. It was a façon de parler, as he might have
said, and didn’t mean much.

  From the footman, who in a dour, discouraging way
was always ready to oblige me, I obtained a length of rope; and
armed with this, my bath towel, and my bathing-suit, I started for
the river. My bathing-suit had only once before got wet: when
Marian spread her dripping hair on it.

  Mounting the sluice, I saw Ted in the field, driving
the reaper. It was the last field left with standing wheat; in all
the others the grain was gathered into stocks. Usually I went to
him, but this was a last, a privileged occasion, and he should come
to me. I signalled to him, but he didn’t see me; swaying and
bumping on the seat of the “spring-balance,” he kept looking down
to make sure that the blades were engaging with the wheat, and then
up at the horse’s head. At last one of the men saw me and told him.
He stopped the horse and slowly dismounted, and the man got up in
his place.

  I went across to the second, smaller sluice to meet
him, but before we reached each other he stopped, which was most
unlike him. I stopped too.

  “I didn’t think you’d come again,” he said.

  “I came to say good-bye,” I told him. “I’m going
away tomorrow, or Friday at latest.” We seemed to be talking across
a small but noticeable gulf.

  “Well, good-bye, Master Colston, and good luck,” he
said. “I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, I’m sure.”

  I stared at him. I was not very observant, but I saw
that the strangeness in his manner was borne out by his appearance.
Once he had reminded me of a cornfield ripe for reaping; now he was
like corn that had been cut and left in the sun. I suppose he
wasn’t more than twenty-five. He had never looked young to me;
young men in those days didn’t try to look young, they aped the
appearance of maturity. But now I could see in his face the
features of a much older person. Sweating though he was, he looked
dried up, the husk of the man he had been. He had taken in his belt
another notch, I noticed. I might have said to him, as he had said
to me: “Who’s been upsetting you?” but what I said was:

  “Is it true you are going to the war?”

  “Why,” said he, “who told you?”

  “Lord Trimingham,” I answered.

  He said nothing to that.

  “Did you know Marian was engaged to him?” I
asked.

  He nodded.

  “Is that why you’re going?”

  He shuffled with his feet as horses do, and for a
moment I thought he was going to flare out at me.

  “I don’t know that I
am
going,” he said
with a touch of his old spirit. “That’s for her to say. It isn’t
what I want, but what she wants.”

  I thought this a cowardly speech, and still do.

  “Look here, Master Colston,” he said suddenly, “you
haven’t told anyone about this, have you? It’s only a business
matter between me and Miss Marian, but—”

  “I haven’t told anyone,” I said.

  He still looked anxious.

  “She said you wouldn’t, but I said: ‘He’s only a
youngster, he might talk.’ “

  “I haven’t told anyone,” I repeated.

  “Because we don’t want to get ourselves into
trouble, do we?”

  “I haven’t told anyone,” I said again.

  “I’m sure we’re both very much obliged to you,
Master Colston, for doing what you have,” he said, almost as if he
was proposing a vote of thanks. “It isn’t every young gentleman
would want to give up his afternoons to carry messages like an
errand boy.”

  He seemed to have become acutely conscious of the
social gap between us. He was keeping his distance in more ways
than one. At first I had been flattered by his calling me “Master
Colston,” but suddenly I wished he wouldn’t, and I said:

  “Please call me postman, as you used to.”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “I’m still sorry I
shouted at you same as I did on Sunday,” he said. “It’s natural for
a boy of your age to want to know those things, and us older ones
ought not to stand in your way. And it was a promise, as you said.
But I dunno, I didn’t feel like it—not after hearing you sing. I’ll
tell you now, if you like, and keep my promise. But I don’t mind
telling you I’d rather not.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of troubling you,” I said, loftily
and as I thought a grown-up person might say it. “I know someone
who’ll tell me. As a matter of fact, I know several people who
will.”

  “So long as they don’t tell you wrong,” he said,
half anxiously.

  “How could they? It’s common knowledge, isn’t
it?”

  I was rather pleased with the phrase.

  “Yes, but I should be sorry—You got my letter,
didn’t you? I wrote right off, but it didn’t go till Monday.”

  I told him I had got it.

  “Then that’s all right,” he said, and seemed
relieved. “I don’t write letters much, except on business, but it
did seem mean, well, after what you’d done for us, giving up your
own time, which is precious to a boy.”

  A lump came into my throat, but all I could think to
say was:

  “That’s quite all right.”

  He looked towards the belt of trees behind which lay
the Hall, his glance avoiding mine.

  “So you’re off tomorrow?”

  “Yes, or Friday.”

  “Oh well, we may be seeing each other, some time.”
At last he crossed the gap and hesitatingly held his hand out. I
think he still thought I might not take it. “So long, then,
postman.”

  “Good-bye, Ted.”

  As I was turning away, grieved to be parting from
him, a thought started up in me and I turned back.

  “Shall I take one more message for you?”

  “That’s very good of you,” he said, “but do you want
to?”

  “Yes, just this once.” It could do no harm, I
thought; and I should be far away when the message took effect; and
I wanted to say something to show that we were friends.

  “Well,” he said, once more across the gap, “say
tomorrow’s no good, I’m going to Norwich, but Friday at half past
six, same as usual.”

  I promised I would tell her. On the top of the
sluice I stopped and looked back. Ted, too, was looking back. He
took off his old soft hat and waved it, shading his eyes and waving
vigorously. I tried to take off mine and wondered why I couldn’t.
Then I saw why. In one hand I was carrying my bathing-suit, in the
other my towel; the rope was draped like a halter round my neck.
Suddenly I felt exceedingly uncomfortable; my movements were
cramped and my neck was sweating. I hadn’t noticed my encumbrances
till now, nor apparently had Ted. I had forgotten what I came for
and remembered something that I hadn’t come for. Swinging my dry
bathing-suit, which now was warm to the touch, and with the halter
chafing my neck, I walked back across the blistering causeway. What
a fool I should look, I thought, if Marcus saw me.

  20

  ON THE TEA-TABLE lay my mother’s letter. The order
of release had come.

  I realized then how much I had been counting on it,
and my relief was a measure of the insecurity that I had felt since
Sunday. Since Sunday I had enjoyed a great many things, and with
all my being, so it seemed, but, underneath, the foundations were
still crumbling. At the sight of the letter various physical
processes that unbeknown to me had been disorganized by the strain
began to function normally; I talked a lot and ate voraciously. If
I did not make an excuse to dart away and read the letter, it was
partly to postpone the sense of flatness that I knew from
experience would follow certitude, and partly because breaking the
news to Mrs. Maudsley was the one task left to me at Brandham that
I dreaded. I had seen many guests leave Brandham unlamented, and it
might have occurred to me that Mrs. Maudsley would take my
departure philosophically too, had I not been so much the centre of
my own world and, as I thought, of hers.