Any Human Heart (3 page)

This evening before dinner I kissed Lucy on the landing outside the airing cupboard. She did not resist. We used tongues and this time I put my arms around her and held her body against mine in a hug. She’s a big, solid girl. When I tried to touch her breasts she pushed me away easily, but I saw she was flushed and excited and her chest moved with the intensity of her breathing. I told her I was in love with her and she laughed. We’re first cousins, she said, it’s illegal, we’re committing incest. She goes back up north tomorrow — how will I live without her?

At dinner tonight I looked across the table at my father as he sawed lumps of mutton off the slices of joint on his plate and popped them in his mouth, chewing vigorously — at least there seemed nothing wrong with his appetite. Perhaps it is too gloomy a prognosis? He’s a sober and cautious man, Father, and it would be entirely in his nature to read too much into a doctor’s professional circumlocutions. My mother, I noticed, seemed oblivious, chatting away to Lucy, showing her some new nacreous paint with which she had decorated her fingernails. But perhaps she didn’t know? But if she was meant to be in the dark, wouldn’t Father have said something to me about keeping the matter between ourselves?

After dinner Lucy and I played Splash while Mother and Father listened to music on the gramophone and Father smoked his quotidian cigar. When Mother left the room I followed her and asked her if Father was all right.

‘Of course he is. As fit as ten fiddles. Why you asking, Logan,
querido?
’

‘I thought he seemed a bit tired at golf today.’

‘Listen, he’s no more such a young man. Did you beat him?’

‘No, actually, he won easily.’

‘The day he lose to you at golf, my darling, is the day I start to worrying.’

So that was that, and now I sit in my hideous brown and silver bedroom reassured by the famous ‘golf test’ for determining your state of health. Down the corridor Lucy lies in her bed — is she thinking of me, I wonder, as I think of her? I think I truly love her, not for her beauty so much as for her honesty, her strength of character, so much stronger than mine. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to her so: I sense my own flaws and failings so acutely and I feel I need Lucy’s strength to compensate — to help me thrive and flourish, to achieve everything I know I am capable of achieving.

Filthy school and filthy weather. I have consulted separately with Scabius and Leeping — sorry, Peter and Ben — and we will announce the challenges to each other at brew after second prep.

Holden-Dawes summoned me to him at the end of History this afternoon and asked what colleges I was thinking of applying to at Oxford. I told him it was a toss up between Balliol and Christ Church and he gave me one of his sardonic smiles and counselled against both. But Scabius is trying for a Balliol scholarship, I reminded him. And you are, of course, the chummiest of chums, H-D said, adding that this was not a tactically sound reason for applying for an Oxford scholarship. He looked at me silently for a while and then prodded his pen in my direction several times as if he’d come to an earth-shattering decision.

‘I see you in the Turl,’ he said, ‘not the Broad or the High.’

‘And where are these places situated, sir?’ I queried.

‘They are streets in Oxford, Mountstuart. Yes, I see you nicely ensconced in one of those charming smaller colleges on the Turl — Exeter or Lincoln. No, even Jesus. I’ve an old acquaintance at Jesus who could be helpful — yes, one of those will be ideal. Not Balliol or the House for you, Mountstuart, no, no, no. Trust me.’

He went on in this annoying, slightly patronizing vein for a while, saying he would have a word with the Lizard
⁴
about it, adding that there were some very ‘gettable’ scholarships and exhibitions at Lincoln, Exeter and Jesus that he thought were well within my capabilities. I had no idea what he was talking about, unable to identify any Oxford colleges apart from the famous ones, as I’d only been to Oxford once when I was about twelve. However, I’m now not sure whether to be pleased or irritated by H-D’s interest in me — it’s most unusual that he concerns himself with any individual’s future. Have I, perhaps, become a favourite?

Later. The challenges. They are cads and villains, Scabius and Leeping — they do not deserve the intimacies of a Christian name after what they have done to me. Mind you, we were all pretty taken aback at what we’d thought up for each other. The term will certainly be an interesting one and not without humour. And one more thing is clear — we know each other very well. So, the challenges — I’ll save mine till the end. First Ben Leeping. Scabius had this idea that I endorsed enthusiastically and immediately. Leeping — the Jew — has to become a Roman Catholic but, better still, has to be considered as fit for the priesthood. Leeping was, to put it mildly, somewhat shocked when we told him. ‘Bastards,’ he said several times, ‘absolute bastards.’

As for Scabius’s challenge, this was my idea, not Leeping’s, though Leeping was quick to see its merits. Near the school is the Home Farm, a place we often walk by and occasionally visit (it forms part of our curricular activities, particularly biology). The farm manager’s name is Clough and he has a daughter (as well as a couple of strapping sons). We had spotted this girl a few times working around the farm buildings — carrying pails, driving cattle — and established her as the child of the Cloughs. She looks to be about nineteen or twenty, a sturdy small girl with a mass of crinkly brown hair that she tries vainly to keep hidden under a succession of head scarves. Our challenge to Scabius — lanky, shy, introverted Peter Scabius — is to seduce her: a witnessed kiss will be the ultimate test. Peter laughed out loud when we told him — actually, his laugh sounded like a terrified neigh, like a donkey being tortured — and he refused to accept the challenge on the grounds that it was a sick joke, impossible, dangerous, potentially illegal. But we were implacable and, reluctantly, he agreed.

And then they told me what my challenge was, and I felt the same cry of ‘No!’ ‘Impossible!’ ‘Unfair!’ rising up within me. My task was to win my school colours for rugby before the term had ended. I not only had to become a member of the First XV, I also had to flourish and shine within it.

The point is, and this is where I feel I have been hard done by, that we in our set have a loathing for organized school sports — it is one of the key factors that binds and draws us together. For Scabius sport presents no problems as he is wholly and utterly unsuited to it — he is uncoordinated, weak, inept — he could not kick a ball against a barn, let alone a barn door. Both Leeping and I have avoided the worst of this sports-mad school by carefully nurturing feigned illnesses: Leeping has migraines, I have a bad back. In this way, as far as rugby is concerned, the most and the worst I have to do is turn out once a week for the House XV in the school leagues. I play on the right wing: if I’m lucky an entire game can go by without my touching a ball or dirtying my knees.

But as I sit here now — and I imagine Peter and Ben contemplating their own tasks — a small, acute thrill of excitement runs through me. This is, in effect, exactly what the challenges were designed to do: we had to manipulate our penultimate, dreariest term of our school life into something more exciting and edifying. And who knows what gems we will provide for our
Livre d’Or?

The Lizard summoned me into his study tonight. He was drinking sherry from a tumbler and spent about ten minutes trying to light one of his biggest pipes — he must have had a couple of fistfuls of tobacco crammed into that bowl. Once he’d got the thing going (the air blue with smoke, sparks rising as he tamped down, with some sort of penknife device, his fuming shag), he said that H-D had spoken to him about Oxford and he — the Lizard — thought it an excellent idea that I try for the Griffud Rhys Bowen history scholarship at Jesus College, to which end he asked me if I had any Welsh blood in my veins. I said not as far as I knew, but there was Scottish family on my father’s side. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘you Celts seem to stick together. You’ll probably be fine.’ He really is a loathsome old bigot.

Preliminary moves. The three of us went down to the Home Farm at afternoon break. Boys were encouraged to visit and ‘lend a hand’, as and when Clough (a solemn, dour man with half a mouthful of brown teeth) deemed it necessary. He met us in the farmyard and said bluntly that there wasn’t much call for help in January but, now we were asking, we could muck out the stables of his plough horses, seeing as his Tess was at the dentist in Norwich.

Tess! We could hardly keep our faces straight when, armed with shovels and pitchforks, we were led round to the stables, where half a dozen massive shire-horses stamped and chewed and swished their tails. As soon as Clough left so did Ben and I, leaving lovelorn Peter to await the return of the beautiful and mysterious Tess.

After Greek this morning I approached Younger, who is in the First XV, and, as casually as I could manage, asked him how the school team was doing and what its weaknesses were. He was a little surprised at this line of questioning coming from a notorious Bolshevik like me but was forthright enough in his replies. ‘Our pack’s the problem,’ he said gloomily. ‘Our scrum’s not what it was, particularly the front row. All last year’s men have gone, you see.’ I nodded sympathetically. What about the backs, I asked? ‘Oh, spoilt for choice,’ he said. ‘Oozing with talent.’

It seems to me almost impossible, this challenge. In order to win my colours I must get a place in the First XV, which means, logically, I have first to find a place in the Second XV, from where I might have a chance, all being well, of being selected. Yet currently I am a reluctant left wing in the Soutar House XV, which resides third from bottom in the inter-house league table. It is clear I shall have to resort to nefarious ruses in order to succeed.

The same conclusion had obviously struck Leeping because — as we were enjoying a calming cigarette before the misery of Corps — he began to moan about his challenge and said I had to give him a helping hand. I agreed, but in return said I would need some favours from him, so we shook on it. We both considered that Scabius had far the easiest road. He was already established (‘Thanks to us,’ Leeping wisely observed) as an eager mucker-out at the Home Farm, and although he had yet to meet the delectable Tess (he’d had to leave before she returned from the dentist), it was inevitable that the encounter would occur — and then it was up to him.

I had a double free period before tea and asked the Lizard if I could take a bus to Glympton
⁵
to see Father Doig about a ‘religious
matter'. The Lizard agreed instantly, the old toad. While I was waiting at the bus stop at the school gates — a vile, freezing day with an angled, sleety rain coming in off the sea — H-D pulled up in his motor, asked me where I was going and offered me a lift. He lives in Glympton, as it turns out, and he dropped me at the church door. He pointed out his house to me on the main street and invited me for tea after my ‘church business’ was over.

Father Doig’s glee was almost disgusting when I told him I had a friend of ‘the Jewish persuasion’ who wanted to convert to Catholicism. I said it had to be done with the utmost discretion because if this boy’s parents ever found out… etc. etc. Doig could hardly contain himself and said to tell this boy to telephone and he would arrange private instruction, absolutely no problem, not so much a pleasure as a duty and the rest. Doig is really rather a slovenly fellow — he always looks in need of a good shave and his fingernails on his smoking hand are an unpleasant yellow colour from the nicotine.

H-D, by contrast, is the quintessence of spic-and-span. He has a small, narrow, neat cottage giving on to a long, thin, neat garden at the rear. The front room was lined with bookshelves, the spines of the books all aligned like soldiers on parade, flush and precise. Everything on his writing desk was squared off: blotter, paper knife, pen rack. A good fire was burning efficiently in the grate, and H-D had changed into a cardigan and was wearing no tie. This was the first time I had ever seen him tieless.

He served me tea and fruit scones and hot buttered toast with a choice of three jams. I admired his pictures — mainly watercolours and drypoint etchings — looked at some of his prize books and talked about my latest essay (on
King Lear),
which I was rather pleased with but which he had pedantically ranked alpha-beta plus query plus. Then I noticed on his chimney piece a brass artillery shell casing, which was intricately worked with a complex embossed pattern. I asked him where he had bought it and he said it was a gift from a wounded French soldier he had befriended at a base hospital near Honfleur. As he talked it became clear from the context that he had also been convalescing at the same time from some wound or injury.

‘Oh, so you were in the war, sir,’ I said — a bit breezily, I admit.

‘Yes. I was.’

‘Whereabouts? What regiment?’

‘I prefer not to talk about it, if you don’t mind, Mountstuart.’

And that was that — said very abruptly, too — and it rather took the edge off our cosy tea. With the mood now formal and somewhat chill I said I thought I had better catch the 4.30 to Abbeyhurst and he showed me to the door. You could see the spire of St James’s from his small patch of front garden.

‘Odd day to go to church,’ he said.

‘I had to see Father Doig on a personal matter.’

He looked at me fiercely and I wondered what I had said wrong this time.

‘You’re a very intelligent boy, Mountstuart.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Do you believe in your god?’