The Go-Between (35 page)

  “Are men hard-hearted too?” I asked, to change the
subject. “I’m sure Hugh isn’t.”

  “Why?” she said. “What makes you think he isn’t?
You’re all alike, millstones, blocks of granite—or the beds at
Brand-ham, if you want something
really
hard.”

  I laughed. “My bed isn’t hard,” I said.

  “You’re lucky. Mine is, harder than the ground.”

  “I’ve never slept on the ground,” I said, interested
by her comparison, “but I know a boy who has. He said it made his
hip sore. Did you find that?”

  “What makes you think I’ve slept on the ground?” she
countered.

  “Because you said your bed was harder.”

  “Well, so it is,” she said, “a great deal
harder.”

  I guessed then that she didn’t mean a real bed.

  “But Brandham is such a nice place,” I said, groping
towards something.

  “Who said it wasn’t?”

  “Well, you said the beds—”

  “Were hard? Well, so they are.”

  She was silent and I felt for the first time that
she was unhappy. This was a revelation to me. I knew that grown-up
people were unhappy—when a relation died, for instance, or went
bankrupt. At such times they were sure to be unhappy; they had no
option: it was the rule, like mourning after a death, like a black
margin round the writing paper. (My mother still used it for my
father.) They were unhappy to order. But that they should be
unhappy in the way that I was sometimes, because something in my
private life, to which perhaps I couldn’t give a name, had gone
wrong—that hadn’t occurred to me. And in any case I should never
have associated unhappiness with Marian. She seemed to have
happiness at her beck and call, like her other moods, and to be
above the need for it. I thought I knew why she was unhappy, but I
wanted to make sure.

  “Do soldiers have to sleep on the ground? “ I
asked.

  She looked at me surprised; her mind was far
away.

  “Yes, I suppose so. Yes, of course they do.”

  “Did Hugh have to?”

  “Did I—no—no, yes, no, yes—I never slept on the
ground.”

  I had never seen her confused before.

  “Not you,” I stammered, aghast anew at this stupid
pitfall of pronunciation. “Hugh, Hugh, Hugh,” I hooted.

  “Oh, Hugh,” she said expressionlessly. “Yes, I’ve no
doubt he had to.”

  I said, a little shocked by her callousness about
Lord Trimingham: “And will Ted have to?”

  “Ted?”

  Her astonishment should have warned me, but my
mind’s antennae were blunted and I went on:

  “Yes, when he goes to the war.”

  She stared at me stupefied and her mouth fell
open.

  “Ted going to the war? What do you mean?” she
said.

  It had never crossed my mind that she didn’t know.
In a flash I remembered that Lord Trimingham had seen him on
Monday, after Marian had left. But it was too late to draw
back.

  “Yes,” I said. “Hugh told me. Hugh asked him to join
up and he said he might. Hugh said it—it was on the cards he would
go.” I wanted to make it perfectly clear to Marian, and
incidentally to myself, what Ted’s position was. I knew that I had
put too many “Hughs” into it (this was not quite accidental: I was
sheltering myself behind him), but I was utterly unprepared for the
outburst that followed.

  “Hugh!” Marian exploded. “Hugh! Do you mean that
Hugh has persuaded Ted to enlist? Do you really mean that,
Leo?”

  I was frightened, but realizing that I was not the
main object of her anger, I mumbled:

  “He said he’d tackled him.”

  
”Tackled!”

  I thought she didn’t know what “tackled” meant.
“It’s a word they use in football,” I explained, “for—bringing a
man down.”

  “Oh!” cried Marian, and it was as if something had
pierced her. “You mean Hugh
made
Ted say he’d go?”

  Her face had gone white and her eyes were like dark
holes in a sheet of ice.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think he
made
him,
how could he? Ted’s as strong as he is—stronger, I should think.”
This seemed a conclusive argument to me. But not to Marian.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “Ted is as
weak as water. Hugh’s far stronger.”

  I could not understand this at all. It seemed, like
many things that grown-ups said to one another, the opposite of the
truth. But now a new look came into Marian’s face, fear contending
with anger.

  “He might have, he might have,” she repeated, more
to herself than to me. “Did he say
why
he wanted Ted to
go?”

  The ice-holes yawned as if they would draw me
under.

  “Yes,” I said, and if I had been vindictive I should
have enjoyed seeing Marian shrink away. “He said he was a single
man with no ties and would make a first-rate N.C.O. That’s a kind
of officer who isn’t a real officer,” I explained. People were
always explaining things to me and I rather enjoyed explaining
back. “Hugh also said that Ted was a good shot, but it was
different with a rifle. He meant it’s easier to miss with a
rifle.”

  Marian’s face changed again. Something peered out of
it from behind her eyes. “He is a good shot,” she said, “he is a
good shot. My
God
, if Hugh dares! But I’ll not let him,”
she went on wildly: I could not tell whom she meant, Ted or Hugh.
“I’ll soon put a stop to it! I’ll make Ted put a stop to it! I tell
you, Ted’s a dangerous man when his blood’s up.”

  I shivered, and my mood, which had to some extent
pursued its own course, independent of her ravings, began to take
its colour from hers.

  “No, he won’t go to the war,” she said more quietly.
“I’ll see to that. Blackmail’s a game two can play at.”

  I didn’t know what “blackmail” meant, and, with all
my thirst for knowledge, was too frightened to ask.

  “I’ll tell Hugh—” She broke off. “A word would do
it.”

  “What word? What will you tell him?” I demanded.

  She stared at and through me. “I’ll tell him I won’t
marry him if Ted goes.”

  “Oh, but you mustn’t!” I cried, seeing at once how
fatal such a course would be, seeing too the fifth Viscount
stretched before me, dead from a tight-lipped bullet wound that
didn’t bleed. “You see, Hugh doesn’t
know
.”

  “Doesn’t know?”

  “He doesn’t know about the messages.”

  She screwed her eyes up tight as if she was trying
to work a sum out in her head. “Doesn’t
know’1
.” she
repeated. “Then why does he want Ted to go to the war?”

  “Oh,” I exclaimed, thankful to be on firm ground at
last, “I told you. It’s because he’s patriotic—what my father
called a Jingo—and he wants to raise men for the Army. I
know
it’s that—he almost said so when he said he wasn’t an
advertisement for Army life himself.”

  She looked at me as if I was another person and she
wasn’t sure who. “You may be right,” she said doubtfully, but with
the lift of hope in her voice. “You may be right. In that case,”
she said inconsequently, “it’s just silly of Ted and I shall tell
him so.”

  “Why is it silly?” I asked. For us children “silly”
was a word of very strong, though generalized, disapproval. I
wanted to defend Ted from it. “Why is it silly?” I repeated when
she didn’t answer.

  “Oh, because it is. Why should he go, because Hugh
asks him to?”

  Afterwards I guessed why she said Ted was silly. She
thought he was making a scruple of her being engaged to Hugh, and
was going to the war to salve his conscience. But that didn’t occur
to me then, and I said, with unconscious cruelty, still trying to
defend him from the charge of silliness:

  “But perhaps he
wants
to go!”

  Her eyes grew round with terror. “Oh, but he
couldn’t!” she cried.

  I saw the look but misconstrued it, thinking her
terror was for Ted, not for herself. All at once a thought long
kept at bay, from loyalty to Lord Trimingham, from a confused
recognition of its hopeless unsuitability, rose to my lips:

  “Marian, why don’t you marry Ted?”

  It was only for a moment, but in that moment her
face reflected all the misery she had been going through; it was a
heart’s history in a look. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t!” she wailed.
“Can’t you see why?”

  I thought I did, and since so many barriers between
us were being overturned, I added—it seemed only logical:

  “But why are you going to marry Hugh if you don’t
want to?”

  “Because I must marry him,” she said. “You wouldn’t
understand. I
must
. I’ve got to!” Her lips trembled and
she burst into tears.

  I had seen grown-up people with red eyes, but I had
never seen a grown-up person cry before, except my mother. My
mother when she cried became unrecognizable. Marian didn’t: she was
just Marian in tears. But there was a change—in me. For when she
cried, she was not Marian the deceiver, Marian who for her own
purposes had taken me in and then called me green, but the Marian
of the first days, Marian who had taken pity on me, who had rescued
me from being laughed at, Marian who had curtsied to me at the
concert, Marian of the Zodiac, Marian whom I loved.

  The sight of her tears loosened mine and I cried
too. How long we cried I do not know, but suddenly she looked up
and said—her voice altered by her tears, but not sobbing, and as
though it had nothing to do with our previous conversation:

  “Did you go down to the farm while I was away?”

  “No,” I said, “but I saw Ted.”

  “Did he have a message for me?” she asked.

  “He said today was no good as he was going to
Norwich. But Friday at six o’clock, same as usual.”

  “Are you sure he said six o’clock?” she asked,
puzzled.

  “Quite sure.”

  “Not half past six?”

  “No.”

  For answer she rose and kissed me; she had never
kissed me before.

  “And you won’t mind taking our notes as usual?”

  “No,” I breathed.

  “Bless you,” she said. “You’re a friend in a
thousand.”

  I was still savouring those words and remembering
the kiss when I looked up and saw I was alone.

  I had remembered my plan, but I had forgotten, and
Marian had apparently forgotten, that my birthday was to be kept on
Friday at tea-time. I thought I should be spending it at home when
I asked Ted if I should take a message. I didn’t think I should be
present when the message took effect.

  21

  MY CONVERSATION with Marian left behind a glow which
at first I was only too content to bask in. At some level of
consciousness, not perhaps the deepest, we were reconciled. That
was a great thing; once it would have been
the
great
thing—but there was still a reservation in me somewhere, not about
her, but about what she was doing. Dimly I felt that the two must
be kept separate—just as her unhappi-ness and her tears had to be
kept separate from my conception of her as a divinity: they were
mortal, she was not.

  That was one reason for my improved morale: I could
think of her almost as I used to. And I could think of the green
bicycle coasting after her without wishing it had been another
colour; green had nearly lost its horrors for me. There was another
reason, too, why I felt the springs of being starting up again. The
air had been cleared: so many things had been said; I myself had
said quite daring things, things that had carried weight with an
older person.

  Yes, I was on much better terms with myself and with
the world. But I had learned one thing during the last days: it
didn’t follow, because I was happier, that things were inevitably
going better. It didn’t follow, because certain secrets had been
dragged into the daylight, that they were no longer dangerous.

  If Lord Trimingham really suspected Marian of being
too friendly with Ted, what would happen when she persuaded him not
to join the Army, as she certainly would? “It’s not what / want,
it’s what
she
wants,” Ted had said; “she has the say-so.”
Marian had said that Ted was dangerous. I didn’t think he was,
because he had been so mild when I last saw him, but I knew how
hot-tempered he could be, and egged on by Marian, he might—

  This was the point of greatest danger, the point
where the paths of the ninth Viscount and the fifth converged.

  As a theory it appealed more to my fears than to my
mind. Although I had an exaggerated idea of the rights of
landlords, I didn’t think Lord Trimingham could legally compel Ted
to join up, nor did I think he would call him out, as his ancestor
had done in the same circumstances.

  The more I studied the problem and the unknown
factors in it, the more abstract did it become; the persons of the
drama began to lose their dimensions and be elongated into the
familiar lines AB, BC, CA.

  But Ted less than the others. I knew exactly what
Lord Trimingham wanted. He was a constant: he wanted to marry
Marian. I knew what Marian wanted, or what she intended, which was
not the same thing: to marry Lord Trimingham and keep Ted by her.
And what did Ted want? What she wanted, he had said, but I doubted
it. He was much the most impulsive of the three, as I had cause to
know. Sometimes he felt like it, to use his own phrase; sometimes
he didn’t. Whereas they always felt like it. It now occurred to me
that when he heard that Marian and Lord Trimingham were engaged, he
didn’t feel like it, and tentatively revised his previous answer to
his landlord about joining up.

  I feared for Lord Trimingham, I wept with Marian,
but for Ted I grieved. Only he, it seemed to me, had a real life
outside the problem, a life unconnected with it to which he was
always reaching. Into that other life he admitted me as a real
person, not only as an errand boy who must be petted or scolded to
make him function. Perhaps this was unfair to Marian and Lord
Trimingham, who had both treated me with signal kindness. But to
them, I knew, I was a go-between; they thought of me in terms of
another person. When Lord Trimingham wanted Marian, when Marian
wanted Ted, they turned to me. The confidences that Marian had made
me had been forced out of her. With Ted it was different. He felt
he owed me something—me, Leo: the tribute of one nature to
another.