The Go-Between (9 page)

  That night I worked out a new spell. I could not
sleep, partly from misery and excitement, partly because the
Aberdeen, which was also feeling the heat, kept moving about in
search of fresh places until he was lying half-way across my
pillow. Under the pillow lay my diary. I got it from under the dog
without disturbing him, and in the dark I managed to put down the
spell on paper, without which formality I felt it would be useless.
It was a good spell, hatched in the small hours with which I had
then so little acquaintance, and it worked; next day the
thermometer did not reach seventy-seven, and I felt calmer in my
mind and much less hot.

  I did not look so, for at tea-time the gentle
raillery began again. I took it in better part this time, for I was
fortified by the knowledge, which my well-meaning tormentors
apparently did not possess, that the temperature had really
dropped. But it went on and soon I became as wretched as before. I
did not realize that
au fond
they were trying to take an
interest in me and were using my unseasonable clothes and
perspiring face to draw me out. It seemed doubly hard that a
Norfolk jacket should be out of place in Norfolk; I had imagined
that everybody would be wearing one. Suddenly I caught sight of
myself in a glass and saw what a figure of fun I looked. Hitherto I
had always taken my appearance for granted; now I saw how inelegant
it was, compared with theirs; and at the same time, for the first
time, I was acutely aware of social inferiority. I felt utterly out
of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere.
Nothing is more heating than embarrassment; my face flamed while it
dripped. If only I could think of some verbal quip to turn the
tables on them, the sort of thing a grown-up might say! “I may look
hot,” I said defiantly, “but I’m quite cool underneath, I’m a
chilly mortal, really.” At this they burst out laughing and tears
started to my eyes. I hastily gulped down some tea and began to
perspire anew. Suddenly from behind the silver tea-kettle I heard
Mrs. Maudsley’s voice. It was like a current of cold air blowing
towards me.

  “Did you leave your summer clothes at home?”

  “No—yes. I expect Mother forgot to put them in,” I
blurted out.

  The full enormity of this remark then dawned on me;
it was at once a lie and a cruel aspersion on my mother, who would
certainly have got me some lighter clothes had I not discouraged
her. I felt I had lowered her in their regard and burst into
tears.

  There was a moment’s embarrassed silence; teacups
were stirred, then Mrs. Maudsley’s cool-edged voice said:

  “Well, won’t you write and ask her to send
them?”

  For an answer I only gulped, and then Marian, who, I
think, had never commented on my heated condition, said:

  “Oh, that would take too long, Mama. You know what
the posts are. Today is Thursday, he mightn’t get them till well
into next week. Let me take him into Norwich tomorrow and get him a
new outfit. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, turning to
me.

  I mumbled that I should. But among the clouds that
were lifted, a new black one appeared.

  “I haven’t any money. At least only fifteen
shillings and eightpence halfpenny.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Marian said gaily. “We’ve got
some.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t take yours,” I protested.
“Mother wouldn’t like me to.”

  “Don’t forget, Marian, that he has the things at
home,” her mother said.

  I writhed, but Marian said quickly: “Oh, but we’ll
give them to him as a birthday present; she wouldn’t mind that,
would she? And then he’ll have two sets. When is your birthday, by
the way?” she asked me.

  “Well, actually—as a matter of fact—it’s on the
27th.”

  “What, of this month?”

  Her interest drew me out.

  “Yes. You see, I was born under the sign of Leo,
though it’s not my real name.”

  “What is your real name?”

  I saw Marcus looking at me, but I couldn’t refuse to
tell her.

  “It’s Lionel. But don’t tell anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s rather a
fancy
name.”

  I saw her trying to probe this mystery of the
schoolboy mind; by-passing it, she said:

  “But how splendid that it’s so soon, your birthday!
Now we can all give you something to wear. That’s the nicest kind
of present. Shall I give you a mane?”

  I thought that very funny, though a trifle
silly.

  “Or a lion-skin?”

  I tried to enter into the joke. “That might be
rather hot.”

  “It might, indeed.” Suddenly Marian looked bored and
almost yawned. “Well, we’ll go tomorrow,” she said.

  “Or would you,” said her mother, “rather wait till
Monday, when Hugh will be here, and make a party to go to
Norwich?”

  “Who will be here?” asked Marian.

  “Hugh. He comes on Saturday. I thought you
knew.”

  “Hugh coming?” Mr. Maudsley asked, making one of his
rare contributions to a conversation.

  “Yes, he’s staying till the end of the month,
perhaps longer.”

  “Are you sure he is, Mama?” Denys put in. “When I
saw him he told me he was going to Goodwood.”

  “I had a letter from him yesterday.”

  “You know he never misses Goodwood? “

  “I think this year he means to.”

  “I don’t want to disagree with you, Mama, but I
think it most unlikely that Trimingham will miss Goodwood. You see,
he—”

  “Well, I think you’ll find that he means to give
Goodwood up for us.... Marian, are you sure you wouldn’t like to
wait till Monday?”

  In an agony of impatience I listened for her answer.
Who was this Hugh, or Trimingham, who was stealing my thunder? I
felt resentful, even jealous of him. With him there, the expedition
would be spoiled. And to wait till Monday! Yet Mrs. Maudsley had
made her wishes plain, and how dare anyone, even Marian, cross
them?

  “Wouldn’t you rather wait till Monday?” Mrs.
Maudsley repeated.

  Marian answered at once, and it was like two steel
threads crossing each other.

  “Norwich wouldn’t be any treat to Hugh, Mama. He
knows it better than we do. He wouldn’t want to go trailing around
the shops with Leo and me—and in this heat too.” She looked up
mischievously at her mother’s expressionless face. “Besides, by
Monday Leo will have melted into butter, and all he’ll need will be
a muslin bag! But of course if anyone would like to go with
us!”

  Her glance strayed from face to face, a challenge,
not an invitation, and my eyes followed hers, desperately anxious
that there should be no acceptances. And there were not. They all
excused themselves. I suppose my jubilation was plain to see.

  “Then may we go, Mama?” asked Marian.

  “Of course, unless your father wants the
horses.”

  Mr. Maudsley shook his head.

  “But don’t go to Stirling and Porter,” Mrs. Maudsley
said, “as you sometimes do. I never like their things.”

  “I should go to Challow and Crawshay,” said Deny s
with sudden energy. “They’re much the best.”

  “No, Denys, they’re not,” his mother said.

  “I know Trimingham sometimes goes there for his
ties,” Denys persisted.

  “Will Leo be needing ties?”

  “I’ll stand him a tie if you promise to get it at
Challow’s.”

  I began to feel hot again.

  “I tell you what,” said Marian, “let each of the
family give him something, and then we can share the blame if
they’re not right.”

  “Bags I the bags,” said Marcus suddenly.

  “Oh, Marcus!”

  A chorus of disapproval greeted Marcus’s joke, and
he looked quite sheepish until his mother said:

  “Well, they can be
my
present, Marcus
dear.”

  I was surprised to see the fondness in her face.

  Marian said she would find out what I needed. For
this she would have to examine my exiguous wardrobe, an inquisition
that I dreaded; but when it came, when all soft and flouncy she
appeared in our room, heralded by Marcus, what a delight it was!—a
transformation scene. She studied each garment almost reverently.
“How beautifully they are mended!” she said. “I wish we had someone
who could mend like that!” I didn’t tell her that my mother had
done it, but perhaps she guessed. She was quick at finding out
things. “Those clothes you had at home were a myth, weren’t they?”
she said.

  “A myth?” I echoed.

  “I mean you didn’t really have them?”

  I nodded, happy to have been found out, delighting
in the shared secret. But how could she have known?

  4

  THE EXPEDITION to Norwich was a turning-point: it
changed everything. Of the expedition itself I remember little
except a general sense of well-being which seemed to mount and
mount in me, ever seeking higher levels, like wine filling a glass.
Ordinarily the process of buying clothes irked me, for I was not
vain of my appearance and had no reason to be. I never felt that it
had much to do with me until the amusement caused by my looking so
hot convinced me that it had. The idea that I was somehow bound up
with what I looked like was a revelation to me and at first a very
disturbing one. When Marian told me that one thing suited me and
another didn’t (she was never for a moment in doubt), when I
realized that her main concern was for clothes that would look well
rather than wear well, a new feeling was born in me whose sweetness
I remember, though it died so quickly. I came back not only feeling
it was glorious to be me, intimately satisfying to look like
me.

  We lunched at the Maid’s Head in Wensum Street, and
this was a great occasion for me, for even when my father was alive
it was held to be a great extravagance to go to a hotel: if we went
out for a meal it was always to a restaurant.

  We had started away from Brandham early, and by
lunch-time we had nearly finished our shopping. One by one the
parcels were put into the carriage until the seat in front of us
was covered with them. I could hardly believe that most of them
were for me. “Would you like to array yourself now,” Marian asked
me, “or would you rather wait till we get home?” I still remember
the indecision that this question brought me; in the end, for the
sake of prolonging anticipation, I said that I would wait. Hot as
it must have been in Norwich—for the thermometer, when we visited
it later in the day, still stood at eighty-three and had been
higher—I don’t remember feeling the heat, for all rny winter
wear.

  What did we talk about that has left me with an
impression of wings and flashes, as of air displaced by the flight
of a bird? Of swooping and soaring, of a faint iridescence subdued
to the enfolding brightness of the day?

  It all seemed to depend on her presence, yet when
after luncheon she dismissed me, asking me to amuse myself for an
hour in the Cathedral, my ecstasy continued. No doubt it was partly
that I knew that I should soon see her again; but never had I felt
in such harmony with my surroundings. It was as though the whole
building, striving upwards to its famous vaulted roof, expressed
what I was feeling, and later when I left the cool gloom of the
interior for the heat and sunshine outside, the domain of Tombland,
whose name fascinated me, I kept craning my neck to try to fix the
point, the exact point, at which the summit of the spire pierced
the sky.

  
O altitudo
! She had asked me to meet her by
the statue of Sir Thomas Browne; and in order not to be late I was
early; the carriage was there with its two horses, the coachman
raised his whip in salute. I hung around the statue, wondering who
Sir Thomas Browne was, shy of getting into the carriage and sitting
there as if I owned it; and then I caught sight of her on the far
side of the square. She seemed to be saying good-bye to someone, at
least I had the impression of a raised hat. She came slowly towards
me, threading her way through the drowsy traffic, and did not see
me till much later. Then she waved her parasol with its frilly,
foamy edges and quickened her step.

  My spiritual transformation took place in Norwich:
it was there that, like an emerging butterfly, I was first
conscious of my wings. I had to wait until tea for the public
acknowledgment of my apotheosis. My appearance was greeted with
cries of acclaim, as if the whole party had been living for this
moment. Instead of gas-jets, fountains of water seemed to spring up
round me. I was made to stand on a chair and revolve like a planet,
while everything of my new outfit that was visible was subjected to
admiring or facetious comment. “Did you get the tie from
Challow’s?” cried Denys. “I won’t pay for it unless you did!”
Marian said yes. Actually, as I discovered afterwards, the tie had
another name on it—we had gone to so many shops! “What a cool
customer he looks!” said someone, wittily. “Yes,” said another,
“just like a cucumber, and the same shade of green!” They discussed
what kind of green it was. “Lincoln green!” said another voice. “He
might be Robin Hood!” I was delighted by that, and saw myself
roaming the greenwood with Maid Marian. “Don’t you
feel
different?” somebody asked me, almost as indignantly as if I had
denied it. “Yes,” I exclaimed, “I feel quite another person!”
—which was less than the truth. They all laughed at this. The talk
drifted away from me, as it does from children, and I got down
awkwardly from my pedestal, realizing that my moment was over; but
what a moment it had been!

  “Come here, my dear,” said Mrs. Maudsley, “and let
me look at you near to.” I went towards her nervously, caught like
a moth in the beam from her eye, that black searchlight, whose
pressure and intensity never varied. She rubbed the soft, thin
material between her fingertips. “These smoked-pearl buttons are
nice, I think, don’t you? Yes, I think it does very well, and I
hope your mother will think so, too. By the way, Marian,” she
added, turning to her daughter as if I and my concerns no longer
existed for her, “did you find time for those little commissions I
gave you—the things we shall be wanting next week?” “I did, Mama,”
said Marian.