The Go-Between (8 page)

  And that was why, for the first day or two, I never
properly took in the fact that one of “them” was my host’s son, and
another his daughter. Blond (as they mostly were), dressed in
white, swinging their tennis rackets, they looked so much
alike!

  Denys, the son and heir, was a tall, fair young man
with unfinished features and a conceited expression (schoolboys are
quick to diagnose conceit). He was full of plans and opinions that
he would press for more than they were worth— which even I could
tell was not very much. He would grow warm enlarging upon the
advantage of such and such a project until his mother, with a few
cool words, would puncture it. I think he felt that she despised
him, and he was the more anxious to assert himself against her and
exercise the overt authority that his father never exerted. Between
Mr. and Mrs. Maudsley I never saw a sign of disagreement; she went
her way and he went his, gnome-like, leaving a trail of gold. I
should hardly have known they were married, accustomed as I was to
the more demonstrative manner of my parents. He alone, it seemed to
me, was not included in the plans that Mrs. Maudsley made for
everybody, for she had us all, I gradually realized, on a string,
which I came to think of as the beam of her dark eye. We seemed to
come and go unnoticed, but really we did not.

  “My sister is very beautiful,” Marcus said to me one
day. He announced it quite impersonally, as who should say “Two and
two make four,” and I received it in the same spirit. It was a
fact, like other facts, something to be learned. I had not thought
of Miss Marian (I think I called her this to myself) as beautiful,
but when I saw her next, I studied her in the light of Marcus’s
announcement. It must have been in the front part of the house, for
I have an impression of light, which was absent in our part,
Marcus’s and mine; I believe I had some schoolboy notion that the
front of the house, where the grown-up people lived, was the
“private side” and that I was trespassing when I went there. She
must have been sitting still for my scrutiny, for I have the
impression that I was looking down on her, and she was tall, even
by grown-up standards. I must have taken her unawares, for she was
wearing what I afterwards came to think of as her “hooded” look.
Her father’s long eyelids drooped over her eyes, leaving under them
a glint of blue so deep and liquid that it might have been shining
through an unshed tear. Her hair was bright with sunshine, but her
face, which was full like her mother’s, only pale rose-pink instead
of cream, wore a stern brooding look that her small curved nose
made almost hawklike. She looked formidable then, almost as
formidable as her mother. A moment later she opened her eyes—I
remember the sudden burst of blue—and her face lit up.

  So that is what it is to be beautiful, I thought,
and for a time my idea of her as a person was confused and even
eclipsed by the abstract idea of beauty that she represented. It
did not bring her nearer to me, rather the opposite; but I no
longer confused her with the other young ladies who circled,
planet-like, around the perimeter of my vision.

  Those early days were a time of floating
impressions, unrelated to each other, making little sense, let
alone a story. Scenes linger with me—generally in tones of light
and dark, but sometimes tinged with colour. Thus I remember the
cedar on the lawn, its dark foliage and the brightness of the turf
around its shadow; and I also remember the hammock of crimson
canvas slung on two poles beneath it. The hammock was a novelty
that had just succeeded the corded, knotted kind that caught your
buttons and dragged them off. It was much frequented by the young
people and I can still hear them laugh as it tipped them out and
spilled them on the grass.

  Of this there is no mention in my diary. Of the
stables there is more than one, but I have no recollection of them,
though I carefully entered the names of five of the horses: Lady
Jane, Princess, Uncas, Dry Toast, and Nogo—Nogo I thought
deliciously funny, but I can’t remember what he or any of them
looked like. I can, however, remember the coachhouse, though the
diary is silent about; it. The lamps, the springs, the shafts, the
dashboards, with their shining paint and super-polish, fascinated
me. And the smell of harness leather—to me more captivating than
the stronger horse smells. The coach-house was a treasure-house to
me.

  Enough of the vagaries and inconsistencies of my
memory. But one thing that I had forgotten the diary did bring
back—and not only the fact, but the scene with the utmost
vividness.

  “Wednesday llth of July. Saw the Deadly Nightshade—
Atropa belladonna
.”

  Marcus wasn’t with me, I was alone, exploring some
derelict outhouses, which for me had obviously more attraction than
the view of Brandham Hall from the S.W. In one, which was roofless
as well as derelict, I suddenly came upon the plant. But it wasn’t
a plant, in my sense of the word, it was a shrub, almost a tree,
and as tall as I was. It looked the picture of evil and also the
picture of health, it was so glossy and strong and juicy-looking: I
could almost see the sap rising to nourish it. It seemed to have
found the place in all the world that suited it best.

  I knew that every part of it was poisonous, I knew
too that it was beautiful, for did not my mother’s botany book say
so? I stood on the threshold, not daring to go in, staring at the
button-bright berries and the dull, purplish, hairy, bell-shaped
flowers reaching out towards me. I felt that the plant could poison
me even if I didn’t touch it, and that if I didn’t eat it, it would
eat me, it looked so hungry, in spite of all the nourishment it was
getting.

  As if I had been caught looking at something I
wasn’t meant to see, I tiptoed away, wondering whether Mrs.
Maud-sley would think me interfering if I told her about it. But I
didn’t tell her. I couldn’t bear to think of those lusty limbs
withering on a rubbish-heap or crackling in a fire: all that beauty
being destroyed. Besides, I wanted to look at it again.

  
Atropa belladonna.

  3

  IT ALL BEGAN with the weather defying me.

  The Monday I travelled on had been a cool temperate
day, but the next day the sky was cloudless and the sun beat down.
After we had fled from luncheon (I seem to remember we left all
meals incontinently, like escaping prisoners, only staying to ask
if we could get down), Marcus said: “Let’s go and look at the
thermometer—it’s one of those that mark the highest and lowest
temperature of the day.”

  Maddeningly, and unreasonably—considering how often
I was to have recourse to it—I cannot remember where the
thermometer was; but yes, I can; it hung on the wall of an
octagonal structure with a pointed roof, situated under a yew tree.
The building fascinated me—it had something withdrawn and magical
about it. It was thought to be a disused game larder, put under the
yew tree for coolness’ sake, but this was only a hypothesis; no one
really knew what it was for.

  Marcus told me how the instrument worked, and showed
me the small, stumpy magnet that drew the markers up and down.
“Only we mustn’t touch it,” he said, reading my thoughts, “or my
father would be angry. He likes to do the thermometer himself.”

  “Is he often angry?” I asked. I could not imagine
Mr. Maudsley being angry, or indeed anything else, but this was
almost the first thing one wanted to know about grown-up
people.

  “No, but my mother would be,” Marcus replied
obliquely.

  The thermometer stood at nearly eighty-three.

  We had run all the way from the luncheon table,
partly to make good our escape, partly because we often ran when
walking would have done as well. I was perspiring a little, and
remembered my mother’s oft-repeated injunction: “Try not to get
hot.” How could I not get hot? I looked at Marcus. He was wearing a
light flannel suit. His shirt was not open, but it was loose at the
neck; his knickers could not be called shorts, for they came well
below his knees, but they also were loose, they flapped, they let
the air in. Below them, not quite meeting them, he wore a pair of
thin grey stockings neatly turned over their supporting garters;
and on his feet— wonder of wonders—not boots but what then were
called low shoes. To a lightly clad child of today this would seem
thick winter wear; to me it might have been a bathing-suit, it
looked so inadequate to the proper, serious function of
clothes.

  The record of these sartorial details is before me,
for Marcus and I were photographed together; and though the light
has got in at one corner, and the background and ourselves are
tilted alarmingly, the faded reddish-brown print does display the
uncanny perception possessed by the camera in those days when it
could not so easily lie. I am wearing an Eton collar and a bow tie;
a Norfolk jacket cut very high across the chest, incised leather
buttons, round as bullets, conscientiously done up, and a belt,
which I have drawn more tightly than I need have. My breeches were
secured below the knee with a cloth strap and buckle, but these
were hidden by thick black stockings, the garters of which, coming
just below the straps, put a double strain on the circulation of my
legs. To complete the picture, a pair of obviously new boots,
looking larger for being new, and with the tabs, which I must have
forgotten to tuck in, standing up boldly.

  I have my hand on Marcus’s shoulder (I was an inch
or two taller as well as a year older than he) in the attitude of
affection which, in those days, was permitted to the male sex when
they were photographed together (undergraduates and even soldiers
draped themselves about one another), and though the unfortunate
slant of the photograph makes me look as if I was trying to push
him over, I also look fond of him—which I was, though the coolness
and deep-seated conventionality of his nature made it difficult to
be intimate with him. We were not much alike, and had been brought
together by factors extraneous to our real personalities. His round
face looks out on the world without much interest and with a
complacent acceptance of the situation; my rather long one is
self-conscious and seems aware of the strain of adaptability. Both
of us were wearing straw boaters, his with a plain band, mine with
the school colours; and their tilted crowns and brims make two hard
diagonal lines, inclined planes along which we seem to be rushing
violently down a steep place.

  I was not unduly dismayed by the heat, my dread of
which was at least as much moral and hypochondriacal as physical,
for I still half believed in my ability to influence the weather,
and that night I prepared a good strong spell to bring the
temperature down. But like an invalid whose fever defies the
doctor, the weather did not respond, and next day, when our
post-luncheon scamper had taken us to the game larder, the
thermometer had climbed to nearly eighty-five and was still pushing
up the marker.

  My heart sank and, making a great effort, I said to
Marcus:

  “I wonder if I should sport my cricket togs?”

  He replied at once: “I wouldn’t if I were you. Only
cads wear their school clothes in the holidays. It isn’t done. You
oughtn’t really to be wearing the school band round your hat, but I
didn’t say anything. And, Leo, you mustn’t come down to breakfast
in your slippers. It’s the sort of thing that bank clerks do. You
can put them on after tea if you like.”

  Marcus was old for his age in most ways, just as in
most ways I was young for mine. I winced at the reference to bank
clerks, and remembered that on Sundays my father had always come
down to breakfast in his slippers. But it had been a shot in the
dark; I had never told Marcus of my father’s lowly social
status.

  “And, Leo, there’s another thing you mustn’t do.
When you undress you wrap your clothes up and put them on a chair.
Well, you mustn’t. You must leave them lying wherever they happen
to fall—the servants will pick them up— that’s what they’re
for.”

  He spoke without emphasis but with so much authority
that I never for a moment doubted he was right. He was the arbiter
of elegance and fashion to me just as surely as—more surely than—I
was to him an expert in the black arts.

  At tea-time someone said to me: “You
are
looking hot. Haven’t you something cooler to wear?” The voice
didn’t betoken much solicitude for my state, it had an undertone of
teasing; and defending myself against that, I said at once, mopping
my face with a handkerchief, for I did not yet know that one should
dab it: “Oh, I’m not really hot. It’s just that Marcus and I have
been running.” “Running, this weather?” said another voice, with an
affected sigh in which I detected sarcasm, the schoolboy’s bugbear;
and hot as I was, a chill went through me and I seemed to hear the
taunt “vanquished” and see the grinning faces.

  It was indeed the beginning of a mild
persecution—very, very mild and concealed in smiles and kindly
faces; the grown-ups could not have known it was one. But it became
the thing to say to me, when they came across me: “Hullo, Leo,
still feeling hot?” and “Why don’t you take your jacket off—you’d
be more comfortable without it”—with a light laugh for this
impossible request, for in those days dress was much more
ceremonious and jackets were not lightly discarded. I came to dread
these pleasantries, they seemed to spring up all round me like rows
of gas-jets scorching me, and I turned redder than I was already.
The frightful feeling of being marked out for ridicule came back in
all its strength. I don’t think I was unduly sensitive; in my
experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything
else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably,
but the fear of losing face? I avoided even Marcus, for I didn’t
dare to tell him what was troubling me.