Jill (25 page)

The clock said five to twelve. Until ten past he sat expecting the sound of footsteps, for the gates were finally locked at midnight, but none came. He lay back and closed his eyes.

When he awoke Christopher was walking about and the clock showed a quarter to one. The bright light bewildered him so that he had forgotten the reason he was sitting up. The expression on Christopher’s face was an angry one, and, sitting down, dropped his shoes off with a clatter.

“Just lost eighteen bob,” he said.

All John could think of was that he had laid a bet that he would seduce Jill and had failed.

“Lost a bet?” he said stupidly.

Christopher scowled. “Three hours of poker with Robin Scott and Max and that fool Patrick. My God, I wonder sometimes why we put up with that man. D’you know, the swine won eighteen bob and then started crabbing about giving me a cigarette?” He threw the stub of it into the fire. “The lousy rat.”

Having said this with extreme vehemence, Christopher put on his slippers and went into the bedroom: in a few moments he was swearing at the top of his voice, having broken his tooth glass. John hurried in, his mind growing clearer.

“Then you’ve been in College all night?”

“Ever since they closed, yes. Mind, there’s a bit under there.”

“But the girls, what happened to them?”

“Oh, Elizabeth rushed off with her kid and Evelyn hadn’t got a late pass.… I’m getting sick of Elizabeth.” Christopher slapped his belly vigorously and rubbed the front of his thighs, then put on his pyjama jacket and crawled into bed. He lay, exhaling heavily. John began to undress.

“And what happened this afternoon?”

“That’s right. Lord, what a day. Oh, that was all mucked up by that blasted little cousin of theirs.”

“How was that?”

“Oh——” Christopher stretched out his arms in weariness at having to remember it all again, his gesture being caught up in a yawn. “Oh, well, you see, Elizabeth had a couple of free seats we were going to use, she got them ages ago. Then this old bitch of an aunt gets to know that she’s got them and makes her take Gillian. Then Gillian, the silly little fool, tells Patrick, and Patrick wanted to come and bring Evelyn, so of course the whole thing turned into a family party, properly bitched up.”

“And you didn’t get a chance to, well, pop the question?”

“No, but I’ll tell you something, Elizabeth’s turned all standoffish again, I’ve noticed it all night. She’s gone all motherly and protective and pure over this little fool Gillian. What do you think about that? I’m getting a bit tired of it. Christ, perhaps I won’t knock it out of her when we get back to London.…” He gave a laugh and turned over on his side with a great rustling. “Well, anyway, I shan’t have to shave tomorrow. Oh, God. Put the light out, can you? I can’t be bothered.”

For some reason this conversation gave John a sense of reprieve, and when he awoke in the morning he felt not despair, but happiness, his mood having changed overnight as the wind might swing completely round. It was only half light when he took his towel and went for a bath, and a few stars were still shining among the towers. Smoke from newly-lit fires poured from chimneys and was whipped away. Wind, warm and blustering, tore along under the overcast sky: in half an hour it would be an ordinary dull morning. But John did not see it like that; this half-light, this standing as it were on a prow coming over the edge of a new day, all seemed to represent the imminence of something new. And what could that be but Jill? The wet green grass in the quadrangle, the brooding of the cloisters,
the trees with their dripping twigs, and, above all, the wind—these felt like the agents of some great force that was on his side. He felt sure that he was going to succeed. Emerging flushed from his bath, he felt sure that if once they met again, something as strong as the wind would blow away every suspicion, every unsatisfaction he had ever suffered. He could not think why he had ever doubted the fact. They had only to meet.

What did it matter, after all, if she was Elizabeth’s cousin? Whitbread had been suspicious of John simply because he shared rooms with Christopher; she was as he was: herself, no more. Everything which had contributed to his character had slipped away like an eroding cliff. When he discovered a letter from his sister in the College lodge asking why he had not answered her last one he felt too great a weariness to read beyond the first page. Bird-calls from the gardens soothed him as he dressed. His face watched him from the mirror.

At midday, after a morning of coffee-drinking, he looked into the Bull and Butcher and found Eddy Makepeace sitting alone with a glass of beer at his side. He had unfolded a newspaper and was reading the racing forecasts with an attentive look on his face. As John came in he coughed and lifted his glass to his mouth.

“Good morning,” said John.

“How do.” Eddy returned to his paper, but John came and sat beside him, breaking open a packet of cigarettes. “Have one?” he said.

“Ah.” Eddy produced his lighter, taking one. An item of news in the column that he was reading caught his eye and his mouth opened slightly. “Great God on a bicycle,” he commented to himself, extending the flame.

“Good show last night.”

“Eh? Oh, the show, yes. Yes, damned good show.”

“Some good lines.”

“Oh, yes, some damned good lines.” Eddy tried once more to reproduce the joke that had pleased him, and wheezed gently with laughter, in which John joined. He could see the back of Eddy’s head reflected in a mirror.

“Where did Elizabeth get to, by the way?”

“Eh? Oh, Elizabeth. When, d’you mean?”

“After the show.”

“Why, she went home. That’s right, she nipped out quite early, before ‘The King’. Don’t like people to do that,” said Eddy, wagging his head.

“She had that other girl with her, I suppose?”

“Who, Evelyn? Not on your life. They loathe each other. Or d’you mean that kid, that Gillian kid? Yes, she had.”

“She’s Elizabeth’s cousin, isn’t she?”

“Sure thing.”

“She can’t be very old.”

“Just left school.” Eddy changed the position of his legs and folded his newspaper away into his pocket. Then he blinked several times. “Don’t feel very well this morning,” he said.

“Hang-over?” inquired John knowingly. Eddy started to given an incoherent and boring account of a party he had returned to on the night before. “Here, where is everybody? Is Christopher coming in this morning?”

“I expect he’ll be along.”

“But you ought to hear Jack tell the story. There he was, going across the lawn with a glass and bottle, when he sees the Dean coming along with a torch. What do you think the silly sod did? Lay down for cover, like playing at soldiers. Up comes the Dean and shines his torch on him—lying there, you know, with a bottle in one hand and a glass …”

John laughed.

“Lord, I wish I’d seen it. Here, where is everyone? Here, Charley, has Mr. Warner been in here this morning?” Eddy called.

Charley said that he had not. Eddy drank off his beer and John bought him another.

“And how long is she staying?” he asked as he brought them back.

“How long is who staying?”

“This kid—this Gillian—— What’s her second name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her. Her mother’s convalescent or something, and she’s staying with an
aunt. The kid, I mean. I wanted to go and give her a jolly-up, but Elizabeth crapped on it pretty sharp.”

“Why, where do they live?”

“Banbury Road way somewhere. Here!” Eddy stared at John, turning his cigarette between his fingers. It had gone out and, noticing this, he groped again for his lighter. “Here, you’re not thinking of starting anything, are you? Don’t be a silly fool. Elizabeth’d eat you.”

“What’s it got to do with her? Anyway, I wasn’t,” laughed John nervously, the muscles of his mouth contracting as if he has tasted something sour. Remembering a favourite retort among Whitbread’s friends, he added: “You’ve got a crude mind.”

Eddy blew out fresh smoke and drank a little beer.

“Don’t be a silly fool,” he repeated, and John understood he meant not only that John was stupid for trying to attract Jill to him, but stupid to be attracted to her in the first place.

“Well, damn it, what’s it got to do——”

“Try, and find out.” Eddy looked at his watch, an expensive one: his father was an official in India. “Damn baby snatcher.” He added a comment of exceptional indecency, which made John flush and sit very still. “Hell, where is everyone?”

As if in answer, at that moment Patrick came in, first putting his head round the door. He wore a dark overcoat and carried a walking stick, coming up to them with a foxy grin. “Who’s buying the next round?” he inquired.

“Hallo, Pat,” said Eddy. “Three milds, that’s the order.”

“There you are, John, you heard what the gentleman said.” Patrick hooked his stick round a chair and drew it towards him, then sat down. “Well, go on, boy! Don’t sit there as if you were stuffed.”

John took Eddy’s outstretched glass, going to the bar.

“And you might tell Charley to put a gin in mine,” called Patrick. John pretended not to hear. Eddy grinned.

When he returned, they were talking about the previous night. “No, really, Chris is a shocking loser,” Patrick was saying. “We were having a hand of poker with some second-year men and Chris went down badly. And didn’t he show it. He’s
just a kid, you know, when it comes to taking the rap. Are you seeing him, by the way?” he added, turning to John. “I shan’t be in for lunch. Elizabeth sent me a message for him.”

“What is it?”

“Well, it was to me really, but Christopher would do as well.” He flicked his cigarette. “Will he go and tell cousin Gillian that Elizabeth can’t meet her for tea? She’s ill or something.”

“Like her bloody cheek!” said Eddy emphatically. “Why the hell can’t she run her own damned errands? That’s the trouble with her, she thinks nobody’s got anything better to do than run about for her all the time.”

“Well, they aren’t on the ’phone or she’d have rung them up,” Patrick explained. “They were going to the Green Leaf. Elizabeth had lost a watch strap there and was going to fetch it.”

“Well, there’s a chance for you,” said Eddy, grinning broadly at John, who felt what was coming like the imminence of seasickness. “Here, know the latest? This man’s got a letch on your kid cousin.”

Patrick’s grin spread wider, and he tilted his chair back, laughing up at the ceiling, disregarding John’s amorphous denials and gestures. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” he was saying. “He’s got a crude mind. I’m not a damn baby snatcher.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” said Patrick, his amusement dropping down at last. “Here’s your chance, then. All you’ve got to do is take it.”

“Chance to get clean through on the rails.”

“Strike while the iron maintains a reasonable temperature.”

“Lord, it’s cut and dried, isn’t it? Cut and dried,” said Eddy, belching.

They poked him in the ribs with their laughter, slapping him on alternate shoulders to keep the joke going, buying him another drink. “Here, give him a gin in it,” said Patrick again. “Give him a bit of Dutch. Go on, Charley put a gin in that last one.” And he drew a new pound note from his wallet with his first two fingers.

“Now drink it down,” said Eddy, bearing it brimful back.

“You are a couple of—— Look here, don’t play the fool,” said John indignantly. “I never said anything——”

“Lord, the man was giving her the once-over at tea yesterday all right. Eh, Pat?” Eddy winked.

“Foam dripping from his jaws,” nodded Patrick. “Slavering at the chops.” Confronted by their two false faces, John was without words. “There you see, he knows what we’re talking about all right. Well, I’m damned. And here’s the chance of a lifetime served up on a golden bloody plate. Now what you want to do——”

“Have you got the doings?” interrupted Eddy, leaning his bulging eyes forward. “That’s what you’d better think about.”

“Yes, you must get it all clear in your mind,” said Patrick, also leaning forward, with his stick between his knees. One on each side of him, John cautiously responded to the rhythm of their laughter, for his true feelings had shrunk away and he had seen them safely locked up. “Whose room can I have,” he laughed.

“You can have mine,” said Eddy. “With pleasure, old man, and here, listen, here’s an inside tip—let her get in first, there’s a sod of a bump near the wall.”

“Now let’s get it all straight,” said Patrick, wagging his right forfinger in the air before them. “What you do is call for her——”

“No, damn it, Pat, that’s no good; surely he picks her up at the Green Leaf where she can’t get away. What he does is come along and say: ‘Sorry, Elizabeth unavoidably detained but here’s unworthy self in her place——’”

“All right, then. Then at tea you put in the groundwork. Then after that suggest walking round to see Eddy——”

“Say you’ve left your cigar-piercer on my grand piano,” cackled Eddy, scratching himself.

“And then you can get to work—sport the oak—put the black-out up——”

They were standing by this time, buttoning up their overcoats, bending over him to pat him on the shoulder again. “You’ll feel like a million dollars tonight,” Eddy assured him. Their breath clouding the cold air, their feet clattering on the paving stones, they proceeded up the yard towards the gentlemen’s lavatory, over which stood a leafless tree.

He seriously could not connect what they said with any desire of his own, yet he knew it was a chance for all that, a chance like a piece of bread thrown among a weaving crowd of gulls and one sleek-headed, quick-beaked bird swooping it off with a slight deflection from its course. And he must be that bird, because the news was out, the hunt was up. It was incredible to him that the secret he had guarded should be parted in fifteen minutes between Eddy and Patrick, who in their turn would reveal it to Christopher and Elizabeth, from whom it would fork out in a delta of casual acquaintances. The news was screaming silently across the heavens, he realized with a feeling of panic, and he must reach Jill before it did. For this reason he must take the chance. The door to the different world had been left half ajar and swiftly, lightly, coolly, calmly, he must slip through it and be for ever safe.