Jill (16 page)

John gave a short laugh. “People used to call us Jack and Jill.”

Christopher made a vomiting sound. “Are you much alike, then?”

“We have the same kind of hair, that’s all really.” The quarters became eighths. “She will be beautiful. I suppose she is now—and clever, cleverer than I am, probably.”

“Bore.”

“I don’t know. It makes it that we can talk and go about together. We went to London last Christmas, for instance, and this summer we took a cottage in Wales.”

“What did you do in London?”

“Oh, saw the sights, you know. Westminster Abbey and all those places. Jill wanted to see the British Museum.”

“That’s more than I’ve ever done.”

“No, I don’t suppose I should have gone alone, but Jill wanted to see it.”

“See any shows?”

“I don’t remember.… We hadn’t enough money for much of that. But we saw a Shakespeare play—
Twelfth Night
it was.”

“I don’t remember that being on,” said Christopher, frowning. “Where was it—what theatre?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you which one. Jill’s got the programme somewhere.”

“I really don’t remember that being on,” pondered Christopher. John had a tiny wad of torn paper in his hand now which he could tear no further, so with a careless gesture he shied it at the fireplace, round which it fluttered like confetti round the door of a church.

“Yes,” he continued in the authoritative tone he had been using. “Of course, when I say she’s clever, I don’t mean clever at everything. She’s fond of poetry—that line. And it’s funny, she’s very sensitive. She had a great friend at school called Patsy—Patsy Hammond. They were really awfully thick. Then a year ago she went back to school as usual after the holidays and found that Patsy had gone to America with her people and wasn’t coming back again. She was awfully cut up: hardly wrote for weeks. And when she came home again for the holidays, in three months’ time, she just wouldn’t touch a kind of bran—a breakfast food we had—just because it came from
America. She’s always liked it, but she’s never touched it, as far as I know from that day to this.”

“Just because it’s American?”

“I know it sounds odd. But she went off America altogether—everything American—films, books, songs. For a time, you know. Gradually she got over that. Her stumbling-block seemed to be this bran stuff.”

Christopher took out his cigarettes. “Where did you say she was?”

“At school, in Derbyshire.” He accepted one. “Willow Gables the place is called. It’s not very big.”

Christopher got up and stretched uneasily, then sat down on the leather-padded fender seat. His head hung forward in a dejected way and his hands were stuffed in his pockets.

“My sisters were at a place near Beckenham. It’s queer you should have kept up with yours—I never did.”

“There’s the holidays, of course.” John leant against the mantelpiece, staring down at Christopher’s averted head. “And anyway, she’s only been there two years. That’s why she only had this one friend—Patsy Hammond, who went to America.”

Christopher nodded. He seemed to be following a private train of thought. “But you do lose touch with your home if you go to school young,” he said. “It’s a good thing. It teaches independence, teaches you to stand up for yourself, teaches you how to handle people.”

John nodded, watching him. He had heard Christopher say all this before.

“But I regret it sometimes, you know.… One sort of loses touch. And one doesn’t get a second chance, ever. And we’re a pretty rackety family.…”

He laid his cigarette in an ashtray and let it burn, staring down at the fire. John saw with gathering amazement that he had said something that made Christopher envious of him—only for this moment, perhaps, but none the less envious. There was a disturbed tone in his voice and even as John watched him, he slowly withdrew his left hand from his pocket, full of money, saying:

“I owe you a quid, don’t I?”

“Yes,” said John wonderingly.

“I’m paying about seven-and-six in the pound at the moment.” He grinned and turned the coins over, selecting two half-crowns, a shilling, a sixpence and six pennies. “Here, will that do to be going on with?”

“Thank you.” John looked at it and made an effort to count it. “Thirteen to come, isn’t that right?”

“Count your blessings,” said Christopher with an enormous yawn, pushing the rest of the money back into his pocket. “Here, jumping Jesus, I’d forgotten. What about that essay? I said I’d go to the flicks tonight.”

“Mine’s on the desk.”

“That’s awfully white of you, old man. Thanks a lot. I’d clean forgotten.”

He sat down at the desk and spread the sheets of paper out, switching on the reading lamp with a careless movement. John was content to be ignored, for he was astonished, both at his lies and at their effect. And they had affected him no less than Christopher: he was excited, filled with tentative little lyrical thoughts, like the mutterings of the orchestra before the overture to an opera. He was not surprised at himself for telling lies, but for telling them so easily: it almost seemed that they had been made up long before it occurred to him to utter them, and the mystery of this kept him silent for a while, wondering that lies could be made up in a dark corner of the mind long before the occasion that called them out arrived. How long had they lain there?

And what were they, that they should have thrown a temporary net around even Christopher? He still trembled from the physical effort of telling them, but so early as this he could touch on the overheard conversation of the afternoon and find that it had in some way grown removed from its first agonizing closeness. Everything indeed seemed altered, as if he had ignorantly twisted his tongue round a magic formula and was watching the world change before his eyes.

Christopher did not get back from the cinema until nearly eleven, but he found John still sitting up when he came in, lying
in an armchair without a book. He was ravenously hungry and, taking a half-eaten loaf from the cupboard, hacked a huge slice off and smothered it with marmalade. Munching, he came round and sat on the sofa, beginning to unlace his shoes.

“Watching you do that”, said John amusedly, “reminds me of the holiday I spent with Jill in Wales. Girls are funny, you know. At home, she’s the last person to have anything to do with housework: you can hardly get her to do a hand’s turn. But put her down alone in a cottage and she’ll suddenly change into a perfect housewife. Many a time she made me spread a table-cloth or a newspaper when I wanted to cut some bread. Girls seem to take to that sort of thing by instinct as ducks take to water: as soon as we got there she was scouting round everywhere finding out what we’d got—and what we hadn’t got, too, which was far more important.” He coughed and went on speaking in an authoritative voice. “It was nice down there. Every evening after we’d washed up and lit the lamps (we’d no electricity, of course) we used to sit and read. At first we tried reading Shakespeare aloud, taking the parts, you know, but Jill said it reminded her too much of school, so we dropped that. We used to burn that funny Welsh coal that miners use—it burns without a flame, you know, and lasts all night, just glowing. We’d sit and read till quite late.”

“Oh, yes,” said Christopher uninterestedly. He threw his shoes over to the door and got up: watching the film had made his eyes tired, and the late nights he had been keeping made him disinclined to stay up purposelessly.

John lingered, putting Christopher’s shoes together with his own tidily by the door for the servant to clean in the morning, and hanging up Christopher’s scarf. The rain outside had stopped. Then he went to bed, lying wakeful in the dark and listening resentfully to Christopher’s heaving breathing, that was on the borderline of a snore. It oppressed him to have this other person so close. From next door came the sound of a piano; there was a rich young man there who played at all hours. John listened. He felt himself spun out very fine along the slender line of notes. The music was slow, with a logical sadness.

Jill came into his mind, as now she would (though he did not know this yet) whenever his emotions were stirred gently. He imagined that it was she playing the piano that he could hear and that they both lived in a big house with gardens. He was on the lawn in the evening; the lawn was in shadow and the sun was so low in the sky that it only caught the attic windows. The colours of the flowers and the striped deckchairs that were still left out had grown indistinct. There was a pile of chipped red flower-pots by the greenhouse. The sound of the piano came out of a large downstairs room, where the windows were open, and he walked towards them, feeling the air to be palpable as if walking on the bed of a transparent sea. He could see her sitting at the piano dressed in white. She bent her head slightly to see the music and her shoulders moved as she played. Her fair hair was controlled with a ribbon; her arms, her whole body, were so slender that the bones showed through softly.

For a time he would be content to watch and listen. But after a while she would draw the curtains and he would go into the house.

The first thing John did after breakfast the next morning was to take his sister’s letter out of its envelope and burn it.

He had the idea while lying in bed that morning that if he left a letter from Jill lying about Christopher might surreptititiously read it, and his hold over him (if it really existed) thereby increase. So naturally the letter must be written. He settled himself at the desk: the rain fell outside, splashing the windows and because the sky was so dark and troubled he wrote by lamplight.

It was curious that he felt no hesitancy about what to write. True, he made several drafts, but that was because he found it hard to imitate his sister’s hand from the single addressed envelope. It was cramped, like his own, and might suggest immaturity if subtly coarsened. He worked intently, like an
etcher or forger, his feet locked together and his hair shining in the electric light. Christopher was lounging in bed in the other room.

When he had finished he wiped his hands on his trousers and grinned.

Willow Gables School,

Nr. Mallerton,

Derbyshire.

Dear John,

You said you would write to me, but of course you haven’t, you never do. So I am writing to you instead, so mind you answer.

How are you getting on? Tell me everything about your college and the rooms you have; what work you’re doing (remember the bet we made); who your tutor is, do I know him and what’s he like? I long to Know All. Give me plenty of details because Maisie Fenton’s got a brother at Cambridge and is being just
insufferable
about him. Still, you don’t know Maisie Fenton. (Lucky you!)

I really haven’t any news for you; this place is as usual—need I say more? I came top in English this fortnight (pom-tiddly-om-pom) and intend to do so for the rest of the term for reasons which are Secret.

When do your holidays start? Before ours, I expect—for a change!

Much love,

Jill.

P.S.—We’re going to some incredible concert thing in Manchester, so I shall post this there if poss. I really don’t trust the school box any more after what happened last term.…

P.P.S.—It’s raining. No hockey!

He had just finished copying the last draft when he heard Christopher getting up, so, carelessly stuffing it into the original envelope, he put it on to the mantelpiece and strolled out. As rain was falling he made for the Junior Common Room, where he sat down in a deep leather armchair and pulled out his battered packet of cigarettes. As he smoked he read an article in the newspaper about the promised British aid to Greece.
Outside, in the Fellows’ Garden, the trees were heaving in the wind, almost bare of their leaves. Another undergraduate kneeled in the window seat to look out; he had a very finely-made head and black hair. As he stared from the tall windows he slipped a ring off one finger and put it on another. John wondered vaguely who he was: his face was agreeable to look at.

John threw the newspaper aside and took up a magazine: the fire warmed his legs and he stretched them out. He was hardly conscious of the contentment he felt. All of a sudden there seemed nothing to do, nothing but the certain fact that this day would open into another equally empty day, only the soft pattering of the rain on ancient stones. The firelight shone on the brass ashtrays and on certain dark panels. He felt he had been very foolish to trouble overmuch about Christopher Warner; he ceased to long that he himself could order servants about confidently, that he was rich, that he had a blue chin, that he sang dirty songs in his bath. These were very fine things, but they were losing their lustre as ideals. He yawned.

He had made tiny pencil marks around the corners of the envelope where it lay on the mantelpiece, and when he returned to the room he found Christopher had gone and the letter was tucked neatly behind the clock. He caught his breath for a moment, then he remembered the servant came into dust the room in the mornings sometimes and certainly Christopher would never have put it away so tidily. He took it down and after a second’s thought laid it diagonally upon the table. It stayed there throughout the day; John shifted its position about tea-time, but Christopher was out all the evening and John went to bed quite early, feeling a drowsiness that was rare with him. Normally at night he was tired, but not pleasantly somnolent.

He did not hear about Christopher and Semple’s cupboard till the next day, when Whitbread asked him up to coffee after lunch with a few other scholars. They were a queer little bunch, but John liked being with them and he felt keenly the prestige of being the man who had to share with Warner. They
assembled in Whitbread’s garret-like room, pulling forward the sofa and straight-backed chairs, leaving the armchair, which was nearest to the fire, for Whitbread himself. None of them would ever take the best armchair in the room or help himself to any foodstuffs without asking or accept an invitation he did not intend to return. All their actions were characterized by this scrupulous convention, and there, up in the little dingy room where Whitbread was assembling cups and saucers and milk, they collected like members of some persecuted sect, as if alien to the life around them. There was no luxury or waste or freedom in their company, and yet John was probably more at home with them than with anyone else, though he did not value their friendship. He was very careful not to show this latter, however, as the one thing they all heartily detested was anyone “of their own class” “trying to get above himself”.