Any Human Heart (6 page)

Ben arrived back early from his meeting with Doig in Glympton, saying that Doig had thrown him out. I reminded him that we had both made a pact to continue our challenges. ‘But Peter’s already won,’ he said with some weariness. ‘I just couldn’t see the point of sitting there in front of that reprobate talking about angels and the Virgin Birth.’

Hard to disagree, I suppose. It turned out that Ben kept bringing the discussion back round to the priest’s vow of celibacy and the difficulties involved in maintaining it. Doig eventually lost his patience and told him to leave forthwith — Ben protesting all the time that if he felt a genuine calling for the priesthood then he had every right to examine all the pros and cons. He said Doig got in a fearful bate and practically hurled him out of the door.

Anyway, I told him I was going to persevere, come what may, and, now that he wasn’t doing anything perhaps he might be able to help me out: we only had a few weeks left of term and I still had to reach the First XV, let alone play well enough to earn my colours. He said he thought I was a mad fool, but if I wanted to continue I could count on his full and unswerving support.

After Mass, just as I was trying to slip away from the church unnoticed, Doig confronted me and drew me back into the shelter of the porch.

‘What’s going on, Mountstuart,’ he said, plainly furious, ‘with you and your Jewboy friend?’

‘That’s not very charitable, Father,’ I said.

‘What’s your game, boy?’

‘There’s no game.’

‘Lying little gobshite.’

‘Leeping was perfectly sincere in his desire to convert,’ said I. ‘In fact I think he found you the disappointment. I’m thinking of writing to the bishop about your feeble proselytizing—’

Well, he really blew up at that and threatened to report me to the Lizard. I kept a straight and pious face throughout. When I told them about it, Ben and Peter awarded me another sub-magnificent. We all agreed it had been extremely droll.

After the row, while we were waiting at the bus stop for the bus back to Abbey, Holden-Dawes walked by with a young woman on his arm — quite a pretty young woman. I said ‘good morning’ and he gave me his usual sardonic look, without, however, introducing me to his paramour. I watched them continue on their Sunday stroll, thinking it odd to see H-D with a female; I had always thought him quite sexless, somehow.

Ben said he had been making discreet inquiries about Vanderpoel, seeing if there were any possibilities for blackmail, but as far as he could tell the man was sinless and had no obvious passions for any of the sprats. I wondered if we could get little Montague to whore for us, but Ben wisely counselled caution — corruption of minors and the rest. Then I had my grand idea — not blackmail but bribery. I would bribe Vanderpoel to feign injury, thus opening up a gap in the first team for me. But how much money would we need to seduce the sinless Vanderpoel? Ben was commissioned to be my go-between.

Letter from Mother bringing pleasing news: Lucy is to join us on our Austrian jaunt. Mother suggests we can amuse ourselves ‘hiking up mountains’. What can she be talking about?

At last. I am selected as Second XV hooker for tomorrow’s match against Walcott Hall (fforde has fflu). Ben has been sounding out Vanderpoel and has discovered that he is not rich (his father is a barrister’s clerk, it turns out) but for all that thinks only the most munificent of bribes will tempt him. How munificent, I ask? Five guineas, Ben reckons. Disaster: even between us we can’t muster a third of that. I will write to Father and ask if I can borrow the money — if I can think of some convincing and worthy cause. On second thoughts I will write to Mother.

Somehow we beat Walcott Hall 64-0, some sort of school record. It appears their ranks were depleted by a chicken-pox epidemic and they had to fill places with the unfit and infirm. It was a joyous rout, actually, and I nearly scored myself, hauled down by three or four men just short of the line. The Second XV preen and strut about the school. fforde claims he will be fit and well by next Saturday but only a fool would change this winning team.

Lucy writes to say that she will come to Austria on the condition that our ‘romance fantasy’ is understood to have terminated. I will write back reluctantly, with pleasing melancholy, to agree. Once I have her there all will be different. Scabius’s maddening success with the farmer’s daughter has emboldened and encouraged me. Lucy shall be mine.

To my vague surprise I find my thoughts turn more and more to next Saturday and I realize I am looking forward to the match — Harrow at home. I mustn’t lose any more of my Bolshevik spirit.

Ben and I cashed Mother’s postal order for five guineas (bless her: I said I wanted to buy Lucy a really special birthday present) and we treated ourselves to tea and anchovy toast at Ma Hingley’s. Ben said that Vanderpoel was willing to drop out for one match only but that he wanted to meet the person who was prepared to pay such a high price. ‘He suspects it’s you, of course. Or he might just think it’s that ass fforde, I suppose — you’ll have to do it.’ He’s right, I have to admit. By the way, we drew 9-9 with Harrow; while our first team were thrashed 3-27 — I sense my star is in the ascendant.

Ben told me he was going straight to Paris after school — it seems he’s been offered a job in an art gallery, and he wants to be a dealer. I felt a throb of jealousy: maybe Ben is right? Maybe we are fools to postpone our adult, proper lives by three years at varsity? Three years that, as far as I can see, might be just as frustrating as life at school…

The really pleasing news is that Clough has become suspicious of Peter and Tess’s closeness and has contrived to keep them apart. On his last three visits to the farm Peter has been occupied shredding mangel-wurzels — or some such menial task (his hands are fearfully blistered) — with no sight of the delicious Tess to distract him or compensate. Ben and I privately rejoice — though I admit such an attitude reflects badly on us both.

Later. Went over to Foster’s after second prep to seek out Vanderpoel. He’s a pale-faced fellow with an unpleasant bulbous nose. We haggled a bit over the price and I was able to knock him down to £5.

‘One game, mind you, that’s all,’ he kept repeating, pocketing his fiver. Then he looked suspiciously at me: ‘Why’s it so important for you?’

‘My father’s dying,’ I said spontaneously. ‘He played rugby for… Scotland. It was his dearest wish to see me in the First XV. Following in his footsteps and all that. Before he went.’

Vanderpoel was so touched that he insisted I have my £5 back — which I naturally accepted (I will not tell Ben this, however). Vanderpoel assured me that he would ‘twist’ his ankle or something during the Friday training session before the game. The match is against Oundle, he said — very rough bunch. ‘I’ll even suggest you replace me — not that peasant fforde. Don’t worry, Mountstuart, your old man will be proud of you.’

Why am I lying so much? To Mother, to Lucy, to Vanderpoel, to Ben… Is this normal, I wonder? Does everybody do it as much as me? Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we’ve told? (‘Lives’ — the ‘v’ is silent.) Is it possible to live reasonably without lying? Do lies form the natural foundation of all human relationships, the thread that stitches our individual selves together? I shall go and smoke a cigarette behind the squash courts and think more great thoughts.

Snow — a good six inches — and all sports are cancelled. Yet the newspapers say London is clear — it seems only to have snowed in wretched East Anglia. Why do I feel so frustrated by the thought of the Oundle match being postponed? Longing to get on the field — I must be turning into a true hearty. Vanderpoel sidled up to me in the cloisters and asked me how my father was. I was about to tell him to mind his own business when I remembered.

‘Will he make it?’ Vanderpoel asked.

‘Make what?’

‘Make it through to next weekend — or whenever the Oundle match is played?’

‘I hope so. My mother says he’s clinging on.’

I did feel some real guilt about this — especially given that Father is actually ill. I worried that by placing him on death’s door like this I was imposing some sort of malign curse upon him. But then I say to myself: they’re only words I’ve uttered. Mere words are not going to accelerate or retard the course of an illness. Yet at house prayers this evening I prayed for him, the hypocrite that I am. How H-D would mock me: having my cake and eating it — like all lazy believers — routinely going through the motions of piety when it suits. Perhaps I should insist Vanderpoel take back the £5.

Worked like the proverbial charm. There we are training when Younger and, to my surprise, Barrowsmith trot over from the First XV pitch. ‘Mountstuart! comes the cry. I jog over innocently. Vanderpoel’s lame, twisted his knee — are you up for the match tomorrow? I’ll do my best,’ I say modestly. ‘Good man!’ says Barrowsmith, clapping me on the shoulder. Vague alarm at earning the Barrowboy’s approval. I had forgotten he was in the First XV — no Fenian bastard now.

Ben and Peter seem genuinely delighted for me — and not a little admiring, I think, at my dogged perseverance — and Ben vows he will break the habit of a lifetime and voluntarily watch a game of competitive sport. Peter told me he had had a clandestine meeting with Tess: her father has banned all contact between them (he, Peter, was close to tears as he told me this). He thinks Clough saw them holding hands. He talked wildly of staying in a boarding house in Norwich during the Easter vac in the hope they can surreptitiously meet. We urged him not to be such a fool.

Ben, on his part, said that Mrs Catesby had written to him offering to give him private instruction in place of Doig. ‘I think she plans to seduce me,’ Ben said. ‘What an odd lot you RCs are.’ What’s she like, your Mrs Catesby? I asked. ‘Sort of plump and powdery and pink,’ he said, shuddering. ‘I’d rather sodomize little Montague.’ Do you know, I think he would. We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.

BAD RIEGERBACH

I told Mother my arm was hurting and so have been excused Easter service. She, Father and Lucy have taken the funicular down to the old town, where the church awaits their pieties. Immediately after they left I ordered a bottle of hock from Frau Dielendorfer and am already feeling better — nothing nicer than being pleasantly tight on a Sunday morning at 10.30 — so I thought I would take up the journal again.

The portents for the match against Oundle could not have been better: a clear, sunny, sharp-shadowed day, a thin frost, which had melted by lunch time. In the changing room I could hardly hear the captain’s pep-talk: I felt light-headed, as if there were too much oxygen fizzing around my blood vessels. I rubbed horse liniment on to my knees and thighs, stamped my boots upon the tiled floor and grinned at my team-mates like an idiot. And when we ran out — and it seemed as if the entire school was on the touchline cheering — I thought (and I must be honest, here of all places) that my heart would burst it was beating so strongly.

The referee tossed a coin for the captains: we lost and prepared to face the kick-off. I jogged across the pitch to join my fellow forwards. From the touchline I heard Ben and Peter screaming my name and I gave them a quick, confident wave.

The whistle blew, the ball was kicked and lofted high in the air before falling directly towards me. I sensed, rather than saw, the charge of the opposing forwards and I caught the ball a second before the first three or four hit me. I had just enough time to tuck the ball under my right armpit and stick out my left arm to ward off the big second-row man who was now, suddenly, on top of me. He fell and then I ducked my head before the whole wave of Oundle forwards crashed against me.

I never felt a thing. The referee’s whistle blew and I found myself buried under a pile of bodies. Slowly they peeled off me, regaining their feet one by one. ‘Scrum down, knock on,’ the referee said, and I realized I no longer had the ball. I felt winded, a little dazed by the series of collisions. Soon I was left lying on the ground alone and looked up, aware of Barrowsmith and some others looking down at me with concern. Then Younger (I think) said, ‘I say, Mountstuart, is your arm all right?’ I looked: it definitely was not — my left forearm had a distinct hump in it, as if there was a golf ball under the skin, and it already looked oddly discoloured. I was helped to my feet, my right hand cupping my left elbow as if my arm were made of the most fragile and translucent porcelain. Then the pain began to surge and pulse and I felt myself stagger as yellow and green lights started to flash before my eyes. Shouts for a stretcher. All my sentient being seemed to contract and focus on that fracture in my shattered and agonized radius. I knew, even through my pain, that my rugby days were gone for ever.

Lucy and I went to Innsbruck yesterday, largely at Mother’s behest, to which end she provided us with generous funds. It rained. We sat in a damp and dripping park, umbrellas open above our heads and listened to a military band play Strauss without much enthusiasm. I long to go to Vienna but Mother says it’s too far for a day trip. I long to hear Wagner at the opera house, see the Votive Church and stroll up the Korso. Innsbruck seemed very quiet with hardly any motors, just the clip-clop of horse carriages and the patter of the rain. Lucy was in taciturn and uncommunicative mood so I asked her what was wrong. She said there was no fun to be had wandering around a new and strange town with a companion who had his arm in a sling. I protested: it was hardly my fault, I said, it was not as if I was trying to start a new fashion trend, for silk waistcoats or multi-coloured berets, or such like. ‘People will think I’m your nurse,’ she said. Preposterous. What a wayward and difficult girl she can be.