The Go-Between (4 page)

  So I told myself, and with a gesture born of will,
as most of my acts were, not inclination, I took the diary out of
the box and opened it.

        DIARY

     FOR THE YEAR

        1900

it said in a copperplate script unlike the lettering of today;
and round the year thus confidently heralded, the first year of the
century, winged with hope, clustered the signs of the zodiac, each
somehow contriving to suggest a plenitude of life and power, each
glorious, though differing from the others in glory. How well I
remembered them, their shapes and attitudes! And I remembered too,
though it was no longer potent for me, the magic with which they
were then invested, and the tingling sense of coming fruition they
conveyed—the lowly creatures no less than the exalted ones.

  The Fishes sported deliciously, as though there were
no such things as nets and hooks; the Crab had a twinkle in its
eye, as though it was well aware of its odd appearance and
thoroughly enjoyed the joke; and even the Scorpion carried its
terrible pincers with a gay, heraldic air, as though its deadly
intentions existed only in legend. The Ram, the Bull, and the Lion
epitomized imperious manhood; they were what we all thought we had
it in us to be; careless, noble, self-sufficient, they ruled their
months with sovereign sway. As for the Virgin, the one
distinctively female figure in the galaxy, I can scarcely say what
she meant to me. She was dressed adequately, but only in the coils
and sweeps of her long hair; and I doubt whether the school
authorities, had they known about her, would have approved the
hours of dalliance my thoughts spent with her, though these, I
think, were innocent enough. She was, to me, the key to the whole
pattern, the climax, the coping-stone, the goddess—for my
imagination was then, though it is no longer, passionately
hierarchical; it envisaged things in an ascending scale, circle on
circle, tier on tier, and the annual, mechanical revolution of the
months did not disturb this notion. I knew that the year must
return to winter and begin again; but to my apprehensions the
zodiacal company were subject to no such limitations: they soared
in an ascending spiral towards infinity.

  And the expansion and ascension, as of some divine
gas, which I believed to be the ruling principle of my own life, I
attributed to the coming century. The year 1900 had an almost
mystical appeal for me; I could hardly wait for it: “Nineteen
hundred, nineteen hundred,” I would chant to myself in rapture; and
as the old century drew to its close, I began to wonder whether I
should live to see its successor. I had an excuse for this: I had
been ill and was acquainted with the idea of death; but much more
it was the fear of missing something infinitely precious—the dawn
of a Golden Age. For that was what I believed the coming century
would be: a realization, on the part of the whole world, of the
hopes that I was entertaining for myself.

  The diary was a Christmas present from my mother, to
whom I had confided some, though by no means all, of my aspirations
for the future, and she wanted its dates to be worthily
enshrined.

  In my zodiacal fantasies there was one jarring note,
to which, when I indulged them, I tried not to listen, for it
flawed the experience. This was my own role in it.

  My birthday fell in late July and I had an
additional reason, an excellent one, though I should have been
loath to mention it at school, for claiming the Lion as my symbol.
But much as I admired him and what he stood for, I could not
identify myself with him, because of late I had lost the faculty,
which, like other children, I had once revelled in, of pretending
that I was an animal. A term and a half at school had helped to
bring about this disability in my imagination; but it was also a
natural change. I was between twelve and thirteen, and I wanted to
think of myself as a man.

  There were only two candidates, the Archer and the
Water-carrier, and, to make the choice more difficult, the artist,
who probably had few facial types at his command, had drawn them
very much alike. They were, in fact, the same man following
different callings. He was strong and sturdy, and this appealed to
me, for one of my ambitions was to become a kind of Hercules. I
leaned to the Archer as the more romantic, and because the idea of
shooting appealed to me. But my father had been against war, which
I supposed was the Archer’s profession; and as to the
Water-carrier, though I knew him to be a useful member of society I
could not help conceiving of him as a farm labourer or at best a
gardener, neither of which I wanted to be. The two men attracted
and repelled me at the same time; perhaps I was jealous of them.
When I studied the title-page of the diary, I tried not to look at
the Sagittarius-Aquarius combination, and when the whole conception
took wing and mounted to the zenith, drawing the twentieth century
with it for a final heavenly romp, I sometimes contrived to leave
it behind. A zodiacal sign without portfolio, I then had the Virgin
to myself.

  One result of the diary was that I went to the top
of the class for knowing the signs of the zodiac. In another way
its influence was less fortunate. I wanted to be worthy of the
diary, of its purple leather, its gold edges, its general
sumptu-ousness; and I felt that my entries must live up to all
these. They must record something worth while, and they must reach
a high standard of literary attainment. My ideas of what was worth
while were already rather advanced, and it seemed to me that my
school life did not provide events fit for such a magnificent
setting as my diary was, or for the year 1900.

  What had I written? I remembered the catastrophe
well enough, but not the stages that led up to it. I turned the
pages. The entries were few. “Tea with C.’s pater and mater— very
jolly.” Then, more sophisticated: “Jolly decent tea with L.’s
people. Muffins, scones, cakes, and strawberry jam.” “Drove to
Canterbury in 3 breaks. Visited Cathedral, very interresting.
Thomas A’Becket’s blood. Très riping.” “Walk to Kingsgate Castle.
M. showed me his new knife.” This was the first reference to
Maudsley; I turned the pages more quickly. Ah, here it was—the
Lambton House saga. Lambton House was a near-by preparatory school
with which we felt ourselves on terms of special rivalry; it was to
us what Eton is to Harrow. “Played Lambton House At Home. Match
drawn 1-1.” “Played Lambton House Away. Match drawn 3-3.” Then:
“Last and Ultimate and Final Replay. Lambton House VANQUISHED 2-1 !
! ! ! McClintock scored both goals! ! ! !”

  After that no more entries for a time. Vanquished!
That was the word for which I was made to suffer. My attitude to
the diary was twofold and contradictory: I was intensely proud of
it and wanted everybody to see it and what I had written in it, and
at the same time I had an instinct for secrecy and wanted nobody to
see it. I spent hours balancing the pros and cons of either course.
I thought of the applause that would greet the diary as it was
wonderingly passed from hand to hand. I thought of the enhancement
to my prestige, the opportunities to swank of which I should avail
myself discreetly but effectively. And on the other hand there was
the intimate pleasure of brooding over the diary in secret, like a
bird sitting on its eggs, hatching, creating; losing myself in
zodiacal reveries, speculating upon the glorious destiny of the
twentieth century, intoxicated by my almost sensuous premonitions
of what was coming to me. These were joys that depended upon
secrecy; they would vanish if I told them or even betrayed their
source.

  So I tried to get the best of both worlds: I hinted
at the possession of hidden treasure, but I did not say what it
was. And for a time this policy was successful; curiosity was
aroused, questions were asked: “Well, what is it? Tell us.” I
enjoyed parrying these: “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I enjoyed
going about with an “I could if I would” air and a secret smile. I
even encouraged questionnaires of the “animal, vegetable, or
mineral” type, breaking them off when the scent became too hot.

  Perhaps I gave too much away; at any rate, the one
thing I hadn’t guarded against happened. I had no warning of it,
none: it happened at break, in the middle of the morning, and I
suppose I hadn’t looked in my desk that day. Suddenly I was
surrounded by a mob of grinning urchins chanting: “Who said
‘vanquished’? Who said ‘vanquished’?” And in a moment they were all
upon me; I was borne to the ground; various forms of physical
torture were applied, and my nearest tormentor—he was almost as
breathless as I, so many were pressing on him, cried: “Are you
vanquished, Colston, are you vanquished?”

  For the moment I certainly was, and for the whole of
the next week, which seemed an eternity, I was subjected to the
same treatment at least once a day—not always at the same hour, for
the ringleaders chose their opportunity with care. Sometimes, as
the day wore on, I thought I had escaped; then I would see the
nefarious band in conclave; cries of “vanquished” would break out
and the pack would be upon me. As quickly as I could I admitted
myself vanquished, but I was usually sore all over before quarter
was given.

  Strangely enough, though so idealistic about the
future, I was quite realistic about the present: it never occurred
to me to connect my school life with the Golden Age or think that
the twentieth century was letting me down. Nor did I have to
restrain an impulse to write home or sneak to one of the masters. I
had brought it on myself, I knew, by using that pretentious word,
and did not dispute the right of public opinion to punish me. But I
was desperately anxious to prove I was not vanquished; and as I
clearly could not do that by physical force, I must resort to
guile. Rather to my surprise, the diary had been returned to me.
Apart from having the word “vanquished” scrawled all over it, it
was uninjured. I attributed its restitution to magnanimity; I think
now that it was probably due to prudential considerations, to a
fear that I should report its disappearance as a theft. To report a
theft was not against our code, it was not sneaking, as telling
about my physical sufferings would have been. I gave them credit
for this, but I was most anxious to put an end to the persecution
and also to get even with them. Even, but no more: I was not
vindictive. Luckily the jeering words were written in pencil.
Retiring with the defaced diary to the lavatory, I set about
erasing them, and it was there, in the relaxed state of mind that
mechanical rubbing induces, that I had my idea.

  They would believe, so I reasoned, that the diary
had been. discredited forever as a talisman for self-esteem—and,
indeed, they were nearly right, for at first I felt that it had
lost its magic by being violated; I could hardly bear to look at
it. But as little by little the taunting word “vanquished”
disappeared, the diary began to recover its value for me, I felt
its power returning. How wonderful if I could make it the
instrument of my vengeance! There would be poetic justice in that.
Moreover, my enemies would be off their guard, they would never
suspect danger from a gun they had so thoroughly spiked. And at the
same time their consciences would not be quite easy about it, it
would be a symbol of the injury they had done me, and they would be
all the more sensitive to an attack from it.

  In the privacy of my retreat I practised
assiduously; and then I cut my finger, dipped my pen in blood, and
transcribed the two curses into the diary.

  I looked at them now, brown and faded, but still
legible though not comprehensible, except for the two names printed
in block letters, JENKINS AND STRODE, which stood out in sinister
intelligibility. Comprehensible they never were, for they made no
sense: I concocted them out of figures and algebraical symbols and
what I remembered of some Sanskrit characters I had seen and pored
over in a translation of the
Peau de chagrin
at home.
CURSE ONE was followed by CURSE TWO. Each took a page of the diary.
On the next page, which was otherwise blank, I had written:

          CURSE
THREE

  AFTER CURSE THREE THE VICTIM DIES

  
Given under my hand and written in my
BLOOD

           BY
ORDER

          THE
AVENGER.

  Faded though the characters were, they still
breathed malevolence, they could still pluck a superstitious nerve,
and I ought to have been ashamed of them. But I was not. On the
contrary I felt a certain envy of the self of those days, who would
not take things lying down, who had no notion of appeasement, and
who was prepared to put all he had into making himself respected in
society.

  What I expected to be the outcome of my plan I
hardly knew, but I put the diary in my locker, which I purposely
left unlocked, even ajar, with the cover of the diary showing, and
awaited results.

  I did not have long to wait—the results came very
soon and were very disagreeable. Within a few hours I was set upon,
and the drubbing I got then was the worst of the whole series. “Are
you vanquished, Colston, are you vanquished?” cried Strode,
bestriding me in the mêlée. “Who’s the avenger now?” And he pressed
his fingers under my eyes, a trick that, it was commonly believed,
would cause them to pop out.

  That night, in bed, my smarting eyes shed tears for
the first time. It was my second term at school; I had never been
unpopular before, still less had I been systematically bullied, and
I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt I had shot my bolt. All my
persecutors were older than I was, and I couldn’t possibly gather
together a gang to fight them. And failing that, I couldn’t ask for
sympathy. It was perfectly correct to enlist supporters if action
was to be the outcome; but to confide in someone for the sake of
confiding, that simply was not done. All the other four boys in my
dormitory (Maudsley was one) knew of my trouble, of course; but not
one would have dreamed of mentioning it, even when they saw my
scars and bruises—perhaps least of all then. Even to say “Bad luck”
would have been in bad taste, as suggesting that I was not able to
look after myself. It would have been like pointing out some
physical defect. The law that one must consume one’s own smoke was
absolute, and no one subscribed to it more whole-heartedly than I.
A late-comer to school, I had uncritically accepted all its
standards. I was a conformist: it never occurred to me that because
I suffered, there was something wrong with the system, or with the
human heart.