Through Streets Broad and Narrow (22 page)

“You bet! But she's not a child, you know! twenty, as a matter of fact; well past puberty.”

“You'd better go,” Cosby said, “I shall see you in the gymnasium tomorrow night.”

But when they met, Cosby did not speak to him. They each fought a round with Kerruish who said afterwards under the cold shower that it was going to be a very close thing. “You've got an extra inch in your right lead, John, but that fellow's very quick with his feet. I t'ink he may be putting a fairy ring round you on Monday unless you can get one or two into his ribs in the first round.”

“Why his ribs?”

“He's more wind, doesn't smoke like a cabin chimney. But what a night it's going to be. A night to remember! Battling Blaydon against the Spinning Llama. How's it with Dymphna now, after the right you led with your paper and the left you'll be handing out at the Novices?”

“I've not seen very much of her this week. You're keeping me too busy.”

“Wait till Monday night, hey! We'll all be going to the Dolphin for steak and eggs and Guinness for our t'roats. When we've put six of porter into the two of you and you get her back to that flat of hers—why, you'll come out a man at five o'clock in the morning.”

“You're always pulling my leg, Jack. I've got a feeling the whole of this fight's a put-up job by you and the other ‘Knights' at our expense.”

“Why would we be doing that now?”

“God knows.”

Kerruish left him then, bounding round the dressing-room, exchanging blows with Condor and the others. John went off to the Club and found Palgrave on the fender with two of the resident members, Old Harrison, who looked a little like an advertisement for pork sausages, and Tyrrelstown, blinded by glaucoma in both eyes.

John had seven and sixpence in his pocket so he rang the bell and when Bartlett appeared asked him for the Club cheque book. He risked writing out a pound, being fairly sure that Father would include that amount extra on the journey money which was due in ten days' time.

With the money he ordered drinks for Palgrave and the two old men. Tyrrelstown in his blindness asked John if he'd seen young Blaydon lately. Before John could reply he went on, “Always thought it was a mistake allowing that young man the entrée here. We've only ever had one doctor in the place and that was a
faux pas
on the part of the Selection Committee.”

“You mean Sir Stafford?” asked Palgrave.

“Yes, yes, Stafford Harman. He's said to be a damned good surgeon but I don't care about that. What I'd like to know is how any fellow who sticks his finger up your arse and then asks for a guinea can possibly be a gentleman?”

Harrison was not even looking embarrassed and Palgrave was quite superfluously signalling caution to John, who said, “I didn't know that Sir Stafford was a member, sir.”

“What's that?”

“He was elected at the last ballot,” put in old Harrison, “He's a good fellow, Stafford.”

“I asked him about my eyes and d'you know what the hound said? He said, ‘You're too old, Lord Tyrrelstown, for any possibility of surgery, a graft would never take on those corneas.' ”

Palgrave said, “Are you dining tonight, John?”

“No, I'm not. I only came in for a drink and to see if there were any letters.”

Palgrave followed him down to the billiard room.

“Sorry about that. Trouble with old Tyrrelstown is that he's so damnably blind—”

“Good God,
I
don't care. When did Harman join the club? I mean, is it true?”

“Yes. Be quite a good thing for you, I should imagine. I'll introduce you, if you like, the next time he comes in.”

“No, thank you,” said John emphatically.

“What's the matter? You look fearfully down.”

“You
couldn't possibly understand;
I
couldn't possibly explain.”

“I might,” Palgrave said, “if you tried. We don't seem to see much of one another these days.”

“No, I've got to work, you see. I'm so frantically in love with Dymphna.”

Palgrave picked up a cue and put spot on its place. He sent the ball whirling round the enormous table.

“I still feel exactly the same about you, John.”

“It's good of you,” John said, “or bloody for you, if you like. I wish to God someone could give me some advice. I've got a feeling I may be in something of a mess.”

“Let's have din together. Reisling and a tournedo, champagne or Chateau d'Yquem and then go to the Gaiety; there's rather a good show on. You love legs, don't you?”

“Yes, but unfortunately, only Dymphna's.”

“Well, what d'you say then?”

“No, it's no good. It sounds hack, Palgrave, but really, we do live in different worlds. We can do nothing for each other at the moment.”

The prints on the billiard room walls were nineteenth-century political cartoons with fine-scripted “balloons” floating out of the characters' mouths. Back to back, Disraeli was saying to Gladstone, “What a delightful ornament of our spring scene is the woodland primrose”; and Gladstone was saying to himself, “He admires the primrose but he courts the thistle. Who knows
that this gentleman may not prick his finger if he fails to exercise caution?”

Palgrave said, “As a matter of fact, I'm getting a bit more interested in women. I think I could just bear to be married to Joan Waugh-King if I had to. D'you think I ought to?”

“Does nobody ever play on this table?” John asked.

“Not in the last thirty years.”

“How splendid.”

“The table?”

“No, everything; this vast room, all these rows of cues and fantastic old scoreboards, warty old seats and dead men on the walls discussing issues one's scarcely heard of.”

“You're feeling frightful, aren't you?” Palgrave suggested.

“I'm feeling petrified, if you want to know. It's that business about Harman joining the Club. It seems to fit into place somewhere, it really seems to click in my mind like a light switch going on or off! I think I can begin to realize that I may have been the most awful fool in just about everything I've been doing lately.”

Palgrave looked pleased at this. His satisfaction came through John's confused anxiety as distinctly as a bell at dusk.

“I did rather think you'd regret it all.”

“All what?”

“We could have had fun together once I'd got you into the club; but instead you've been behaving exactly like those fearful Trinity engineers; dining on Commons, rushing off to lectures, going to college dances at places like the Gresham and talking in the societies.”

“Well, I wasn't exactly a success at the Meath Hunt Ball, was I?”

“It was only that you talked too much at dinner. As a matter of fact, Lady Derry enquired about you several times afterwards.”

“Guilt probably,” John said. “The old woman couldn't even remember my name when it came to introductions; I had to keep on saying, ‘John Blaydon—John Blaydon—John Blaydon,' like a parrot, and it so happens that I loathe my name. I don't like having to repeat it all the time, loudly, in public.”

“Kitty Mainwaring liked you a good deal, I should say; but you never followed her up after that dance at Drogheda, you simply went back to that Uprichard girl who's really most déclassé and Dublin.”

“I did follow Kitty up. I took her to a show and on the way back to her aunt's flat in Stephen's Green, she invited me into her bedroom.”

“Well?”

“I wanted to like mad, especially when she started undressing in front of me, but the trouble was that from behind she was just a little like Dymphna, from the front she was an absolute travesty. I couldn't face it; but now, of course, I wish I had. With the light out—but there again how was I to be sure that her aunt
was
deaf? That just at one of the crucial moments an old lady with an ear trumpet wouldn't come butting into the bedroom—?”

Palgrave said, “You ought to drop all this Trinity nonsense, cut that Dublin creature right out and start again; I'm really very much more interested in
les dames
than I used to be, we've got my car and enough money—”

“My God, I wish I could start again at that night with Kitty Mainwaring; the paper unwritten, Dymphna only just beginning to register in my subconscious, no boxing to do. But it's too late. I don't really know what I'm doing any longer, I'm in the devil of a muddle.”

“Why don't you spend the night here?” said Palgrave. “Let's both drink very carefully until we're really feeling simply magnificent and then get hold of George Winterbotham and get him to fly us to London tomorrow morning and have a week there in my flat. We'll look up all the London debs I used to know and forget everything. By the time we get back, everything will have changed and we'll have changed.”

But John wandered into the dressing-room and started to polish his shoes on the little dais with the cupboards containing ten different types of shoe cream for club members and about two dozen brushes and polishing cloths.

Palgrave preened about in front of the various mirrors and lighted a Melachrino, watching the reflected movements of his
hands as he did so, appreciating the flick of his thin gold cigarette lighter and the splendid distinction of his bald head.

“Three things,” John said suddenly. “I've got to qualify, I'm going to marry Dymphna and we've got no money.”

“You've got appearance,” said Palgrave. “You only need a little grooming and you could marry anyone. Now if you were to marry Muriel Waugh-King, her frightful father would take care of everything; you wouldn't have to qualify and you
would
have money—masses of it.”

“No good. She'd never look at me even if I wanted her. They're on the make. You could probably get Joan but even that would be a blow to your father.”

“I don't think he'd mind their being
nouveaux
so much. After all they are in racing and they do hunt. A few more years and no one will care whether they originally came from Liverpool or Sheffield.”

Outside the doors into the hall, John said, “You've been very decent, Palgrave. I wish I could explain things to you. I'll see you again quite soon; if not this term, then next, but I've really got to go now.”

“You're going back to your rooms?”

“No, no! My destination's only too obvious—by the way, if you do happen to be talking to Harman at all, please don't ever mention my name to him, will you?”

“Not if it's so vital. I'll drive you if you like—to her flat?”

“No, thanks. I've got to walk it.”

Palgrave came out with him sadly, all his swift flame of self-love suddenly extinguished. A page held the outer doors open for them, straining against the powerful concealed springs like a tiny Samson in the Temple of Dagon. In the end, after their valedictions on the steps, Chamberlyn-Ffynch went back in through the barriers of glass, his young bald head bobbing like a moon in a cloudy sky.

At the flat Dymphna came down herself in answer to his ring.

He pointed to the vacant railings. “No bicycle tonight? No Broyle?”

“They've gone out.”

“Together? Broyle and the bicycle?”

“With Emma,” she said, laughing.

“That bicycle of his is a sort of Airedale,” he said, “vicious.”

She was very much in the doorway, retreating reluctantly, a step at a time onto the faded carpeting of the surgeon's hallway. With his foot John kicked the door shut behind them. She was looking dismayingly beautiful; it discomforted him afresh to find that she was always more lovely than he had imagined her: at any time, in any mood of his or hers, sick or tired, truthful or lying, in embarrassment as she was now, or in ease. Her flesh bled beauty as a flower bleeds out scent. Her movements: compactness in swinging her arms a little or turning her head away to look quickly up the stairs and back, her sudden weariness yawning through her excitement, all smote him afresh. He longed to see her crumple into age, into some imperfection, some small, essential defect which, by changing her for him, would free him as Palgrave's plans never could.

She stopped him on his run up the stairs to the first landing. He went back to her, never attempting to kiss her because of the indelicacy when she was so very distressed and excited, too.

He asked, “Who's up there, then?”

“Mike; I'd no idea he was coming. You can come on up if you like;
they'd
not mind.”

“Who else?”

“Fergus Cloate.”

“Did Mike bring him?”

“I'd have told you not to come if I'd known you were coming. In any case I thought you'd notice his car.”

“I don't know Cloate's car.”

“Well, are you coming up or not?”

“ ‘
Not
', of course,” he said. “You go ahead, though.”

“Oh, dear! I do seem to be awful, don't I? I suppose you're going now? Out back through the night to your own room, simply hating me again?”

“Cloate!” he said. “I wondered how long it would be. No, I didn't; I must admit that was something I never thought of—like Harman.”

“Stafford Harman?”

“Yes.”

“What's he got to do with me?”

He began to laugh at that, a little too loudly.

“God!” he said, “Oh, my God! Harman's got nothing to do with
you.”

“You're so difficult, John. If only—”

But he interrupted her. “Are they talking about my paper?”

“I don't think so; not now.”

“Were they?”

“They said something; whatever on earth did you put in that paper?”

“What did Cloate say?”

“Goodness, I can't remember; it was just crack, that's all. It'll all go under the bridge.”