Eyeless in Gaza

  J.B.’

  ‘It’s too sickening!’ said Anthony, when he had finished reading his father’s letter. The tears came into his eyes; he was filled with a sense of intolerable grievance.

  ‘W-what does he s-say?’ Brian asked.

  ‘It’s all settled. He’s written to your Mater that we’re going to some stinking hole in Switzerland instead of Tenby. Oh, I really am too sick about it!’ He crumpled up the letter and threw it angrily on the ground, then turned away and tried to relieve his feelings by kicking his play-box. ‘Too sick, too sick!’ he kept repeating.

  Brian was sick too. They were going to have had such a splendid time at Tenby; it had all been imaginatively foreseen, preconstructed in the most luxuriant detail; and now, crash! the future good time was in bits.

  ‘S-still,’ he said at last, after a long silence, ‘I exp-pect you’ll enj-joy yourself in S-switzerland.’ And, moved by a sudden impulse, for which he would have found it difficult to offer an explanation, he picked up Mr Beavis’s letter, smoothed out the crumpled pages and handed it back to Anthony. ‘Here’s your l-letter,’ he said.

  Anthony looked at it for a moment, opened his mouth as though to speak, then shut it again, and taking the letter, put it away in his pocket.

  The congenial company in which they were to explore the Bernese Oberland turned out, when they reached Rosenlaui, to consist of Miss Gannett and her old school-friend Miss Louie Piper. Mr Beavis always spoke of them as ‘the girls,’ or else, with a touch of that mock-heroic philological jocularity to which he was so partial, ‘the damsels’ – dominicellae, double diminutive of domina. The teeny weeny ladies! He smiled to himself each time he pronounced the word. To Anthony the damsels seemed a pair of tiresome and already elderly females. Piper, the thin one, was like a governess. He preferred fat old Gannett, in spite of that awful mooey, squealing laugh of hers, in spite of the way she puffed and sweated up the hills. Gannett at least was well-meaning. Luckily, there were two other English boys in the hotel. True, they came from Manchester and spoke rather funnily, but they were decent chaps, and they knew an extraordinary number of dirty stories. Moreover, in the woods behind the hotel they had discovered a cave, where they kept cigarettes. Proudly, when he got back to Bulstrode, Anthony announced that he had smoked every day of the hols.

  One Saturday in November Mr Beavis came down to Bulstrode for the afternoon. They watched the football for a bit, then went for a depressing walk that ended, however, at the King’s Arms. Mr Beavis ordered crumpets ‘and buttered eggs for this young stalwart’ (with a conspiratorial twinkle at the waitress, as though she also knew that the word meant ‘foundation-worthy’), ‘and cherry jam to follow – isn’t cherry the favourite?’

  Anthony nodded. Cherry was the favourite. But so much solicitude made him feel rather suspicious. What could it all be for? Was he going to say something about his work? About going in for the scholarship next summer? About . . .? He blushed. But after all, his father couldn’t possibly know anything about that. Not possibly. In the end he gave it up; he couldn’t imagine what it was.

  But when, after an unusually long silence, his father leaned forward and said, ‘I’ve got an interesting piece of news for you, dear boy,’ Anthony knew, in a sudden flash of illumination, exactly what was coming.

  ‘He’s going to marry the Gannett female,’ he said to himself.

  And so he was. In the middle of December.

  ‘A companion for you,’ Mr Beavis was saying. That youthfulness, those fresh and girlish high spirits! ‘A companion as well as a second mother.’

  Anthony nodded. But ‘companion’ – what did he mean? He thought of the fat old Gannett, toiling up the slopes behind Rosenlaui, red-faced, smelling of sweat, reeking . . . And suddenly his mother’s voice was sounding in his ears.

  ‘Pauline wants you to call her by her Christian name,’ Mr Beavis went on. ‘It’ll be . . . well, jollier, don’t you think?’

  Anthony said ‘Yes,’ because there was obviously nothing else for him to say, and helped himself to more cherry jam.

  ‘Third person singular aorist of ?’ questioned Anthony.

  Horse-Face got it wrong. It was Staithes who answered correctly.

  ‘Second plural pluperfect of ?’

  Brian’s hesitation was due to something graver than his stammer.

  ‘You’re putrid tonight, Horse-Face,’ said Anthony and pointed his finger at Staithes, who gave him the right answer again. ‘Good for you, Staithes.’ And repeating Jimbug’s stalest joke, ‘The sediment sinks to the bottom, Horse-Face,’ he rumbled in a parody of Jimbug’s deep voice.

  ‘Poor old Horse-Face!’ said Staithes, slapping the other on the back. Now that Horse-Face had given him the pleasure of knowing less Greek grammar than he did, Staithes almost loved him.

  It was nearly eleven, long after lights-out, and the three of them were crowded into the w.c., Anthony in his capacity of examiner sitting majestically on the seat, and the other two squatting on their heels below him, on the floor. The May night was still and warm; in less than six weeks they would be sitting for their scholarship examinations, Brian and Anthony at Eton, Mark Staithes at Rugby. It was after the previous Christmas holidays that Staithes had come back to Bulstrode with the announcement that he was going in for a scholarship. Astonishing news and, for his courtiers and followers, appalling! That work was idiotic, and that those who worked were contemptible, had been axiomatic among them. And now here was Staithes going in for a schol with the other swots – with Benger Beavis, with old Horse-Face, with that horrible little tick, Goggler Ledwidge. It had seemed a betrayal of all that was most sacred.

  By his words first of all, and afterwards, more effectively, by his actions, Staithes had reassured them. The scholarship idea was his Pater’s. Not because of the money, he had hastened to add. His Pater didn’t care a damn about the money. But for the honour and glory, because it was a tradition in the Family. His Pater himself and his Uncles, his Fraters – they had all got schols. It wouldn’t do to let the Family down. Which didn’t change the fact that swotting was a stinking bore and that all swotters who swotted because they liked it, as Horse-Face and Beavis seemed to do, or for the sake of the money, like the miserable Goggler, were absolute worms. And to prove it he had ragged old Horse-Face about his stammer and his piddle-warblers, he had organized a campaign against Goggler for funking at football, he had stuck nibs into Beavis’s bottom during prep; and, though working very hard himself, he had made up for it by playing harder than ever and by missing no opportunity of telling everyone how beastly swotting was, how he had absolutely no chance whatever of getting a schol.

  When face had been sufficiently saved, he had changed his tactics towards Beavis and Horse-Face, and after showing himself for some time progressively more friendly towards them, had ended by proposing the creation of a society of mutual assistance in schol swotting. It was he who, at the beginning of the summer term, had suggested the nightly sessions in the w.c. Brian had wanted to include Goggler in these reading-parties; but the other two had protested; and anyhow, the w.c. was demonstrably too small to contain a fourth. He had to be content with helping Goggler in occasional half-hours during the day. Night and the lavatory were reserved for the triumvirate.

  To explain this evening’s failure with Greek verbs, ‘I’m rather t-t-t . . .’ Brian began; then, forced into apparent affectation, ‘rather weary to-n-night,’ he concluded.

  His pallor and the blue transparency under his eyes testified to the truth of his words; but for Mark Staithes they were obviously an excuse by means of which Horse-Face hoped to diminish a little the sting of his defeat at the hands of one who had been swotting, not for years, as his rivals had, but only a few months. It was an implied confession of inferiority. Triumphing, Staithes felt that he could be magnanimous. ‘Hard luck!’ he said solicitously. ‘Let’s have a bit of a rest.’

  From the pocket of his dressing-gown Anthony produced three ginger-nuts, rather sof
t, it was true, with age, but none the less welcome.

  For the thousandth time since it had been decided that he should go in for a scholarship, ‘I wish I had the ghost of a chance,’ said Staithes.

  ‘You’ve g-got a very g-good one.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. It’s just a crazy idea of my Pater’s. Crazy!’ he repeated, shaking his head. But in fact it was with a tingling, warm sensation of pride, of exultation, that he remembered his father’s words. ‘We Staitheses . . . When one’s a Staithes . . . You’ve got as good brains as the rest of us, and as much determination . . .’ He forced a sigh, and, aloud, ‘Not a ghost of a chance,’ he insisted.

  ‘Yes, you h-have, honestly.’

  ‘Rot!’ He refused to admit even the possibility of the thing. Then, if he failed, he could laughingly say, ‘I told you so’; and if he succeeded, as he privately believed he would, the glory would be all the greater. Besides, the more persistently he denied his chances, the oftener they would repeat their delicious assurances of his possible, his probable, success. Success, what was more, in their own line; success, in spite of his consistent refusal, till the beginning of last term, ever to take this ridiculous swotting seriously.

  It was Benger who brought the next tribute. ‘Jimbug thinks you’ve got a chance,’ he said. ‘I heard him talking to old Jacko about it yesterday.’

  ‘What does that old fool Jimbug know about it?’ Staithes made a disparaging grimace; but through the mask of contempt his brown eyes shone with pleasure. ‘And as for Jacko . . .’

  A sudden rattling of the door-handle made them all start. ‘I say, you chaps,’ came an imploring whisper through the keyhole, ‘do buck up! I’ve got the most frightful bellyache.’

  Brian rose hastily from the floor. ‘We must l-let him in,’ he began.

  But Staithes pulled him down again. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ he said; then, turning towards the door, ‘Go to one of the rears downstairs,’ he said, ‘we’re busy.’

  ‘But I’m in a most frightful hurry.’

  ‘Then the quicker you go, the better.’

  ‘You are swine!’ protested the whisper. Then ‘Christ!’ it added, and they heard the sound of slippered feet receding in a panic rush down the stairs.

  Staithes grinned. ‘That’ll teach him,’ he said. ‘What about another go at the Greek grammar?’

  Outraged in advance, James Beavis had felt his indignation growing with every minute he spent under his brother’s roof. The house positively reeked of matrimony. It was asphyxiating! And there sat John, fairly basking in those invisible radiations of dark female warmth, inhaling the stuffiness with a quivering nostril, deeply contented, revoltingly happy! Like a marmot, it suddenly occurred to James Beavis, a marmot with its female, crowded fur to fur in their subterranean burrow. Yes, the house was just a burrow – a burrow, with John like a thin marmot at one end of the table and that soft, bulging marmot-woman at the other, and between them, one on either side, himself, outraged and nauseated, and that unhappy little Anthony, like a changeling from the world of fresh air, caught and dragged down and imprisoned in the marmot-warren. Indignation begot equally violent pity and affection for this unhappy child, begot at the same time a retrospective feeling of sympathy for poor Maisie. In her lifetime he had always regarded Maisie as just a fool – hopelessly silly and frivolous. Now, John’s marriage and the oppressive connubiality which enveloped the all too happy couple made him forget his judgments on the living Maisie and think of her as a most superior woman (at least, she had had the grace to be slim), posthumously martyred by her husband for the sake of this repulsively fleshy female marmot. Horrible! He did well to be angry.

  Pauline meanwhile had refused a second helping of the chocolate soufflé.

  ‘But my dear, you must,’ John Beavis insisted.

  Pauline heaved the conscious imitation of a sigh of repletion. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Not even the favourite chocolatl?’ Mr Beavis always spoke of chocolate in the original Aztec.

  Playfully, Pauline eyed the dish askance. ‘I shouldn’t,’ she said, implicitly admitting that the repletion was not complete.

  ‘Yes, you should,’ he wheedled.

  ‘Now he’s trying to make me fat!’ she wailed with mock reproach. ‘He’s leading me into temptation!’

  ‘Well, be led.’

  This time, Pauline’s sigh was a martyr’s. ‘All right, then,’ she said submissively. The maid, who had been waiting impassively for the outcome of the controversy, presented the dish once again. Pauline helped herself.

  ‘There’s a good child,’ said Mr Beavis, in a tone and with a twinkle that expressed a sportive mock-fatherliness. ‘And now, James, I hope you’ll follow the good example.’

  James’s disgust and anger were so intense that he could not trust himself to speak, for fear of saying something out-rageous. He contented himself with curtly shaking his head.

  ‘No chocolatl for you?’ Mr Beavis turned to Anthony. ‘But I’m sure you’ll take pity on the pudding!’ And when Anthony did, ‘Ah, that’s good!’ he said. ‘That’s the way . . .’ – he hesitated for a fraction of a second – ‘. . . the way to tuck in!’

  CHAPTER XVI

  June 17th 1912

  ANTHONY’S FLUENCY, AS they walked to the station, was a symptom of his inward sense of guilt. By the profusion of his talk, by the brightness of his attention, he was making up to Brian for what he had done the previous evening. It was not as though Brian had uttered any reproaches; he seemed, on the contrary, to be taking special pains not to hint at yesterday’s offence. His silence served Anthony as an excuse for postponing all mention of the disagreeable subject of Mark Staithes. Some time, of course, he would have to talk about the whole wretched affair (what a bore people were, with their complicated squabbles!); but, for the moment, he assured himself, it would be best to wait . . . to wait until Brian himself referred to it. Meanwhile, his uneasy conscience constrained him to display towards Brian a more than ordinary friendliness, to make a special effort to be interesting and to show himself being interested. Interested in the poetry of Edward Thomas as they walked down Beaumont Street, in Bergson opposite Worcester; crossing Hythe Bridge, in the nationalization of coal mines; and finally, under the viaduct and up the long approach to the station, in Joan Thursley.

  ‘It’s ext-traordinary,’ said Brian, breaking, with what was manifestly an effort, a rather long preparatory silence, ‘that you sh-shouldn’t ever have met her.’

  ‘Dis aliter visum,’ Anthony answered in his father’s best classical style. Though, of course, if he had accepted Mrs Foxe’s invitations to stay at Twyford, the gods, he reflected, would have changed their minds.

  ‘I w-want you to l-like one another,’ Brian was saying.

  ‘I’m sure we shall.’

  ‘She’s not frightfully c-c-c . . .’ Patiently he began again: ‘frightfully c-clever. N-not on the s-surface. You’d th-think she was o-only interested in c-c-c . . .’ But ‘country life’ wouldn’t allow itself to be uttered; Brian was forced in seemingly affected circumlocution: ‘in rural m-matters,’ he brought out at last. ‘D-dogs and b-birds and all that.’

  Anthony nodded and, suddenly remembering those spew-tits and piddle-warblers of the Bulstrode days, imperceptibly smiled.

  ‘But w-when you g-get to kn-know her better,’ Brian went on laboriously, ‘you f-find there’s a lot m-more in her than you th-thought. She’s g-got ext-traordinary feeling for p-p-p . . . for v-verse. W-wordsworth and M-meridith, for example. I’m always ast-astonished how g-good her j-judgments are.’

  Anthony smiled to himself sarcastically. Yes, it would be Meredith!

  The other was silent, wondering how he should explain, whether he should even try to explain. Everything was against him – his own physical disability, the difficulty of putting what he had to say into words, the possibility that Anthony wouldn’t even want to understand what he said, that he would produce his alibi of cynicism and just pretend not to be ther
e at all.

  Brian thought of their first meeting. The embarrassing discovery of two strangers in the drawing-room when he came in, flushed and his hair still wet with the rain, to tea. His mother pronounced a name: ‘Mrs Thursley.’ The new vicar’s wife, he realized, as he shook hands with the thin dowdy woman. Her manners were so ingratiating that she lisped as she spoke; her smile was deliberately bright.

  ‘And this is Joan.’

  The girl held out her hand, and as he took it, her slender body swayed away from his alien presence in a movement of shyness that was yet adorably graceful, like the yielding of a young tree before the wind. That movement was the most beautiful and at the same time the most touching thing he had ever seen.

  ‘We’ve been hearing you’re keen on birds,’ said Mrs Thursley, with an oppressive politeness and intensifying that all too bright, professionally Christian smile of hers. ‘So’s Joan. A regular ornithologist.’

  Blushing, the girl muttered a protest.

  ‘She will be pleased to have someone to talk to about her precious birds. Won’t you, Joanie?’

  Joan’s embarrassment was so great that she simply couldn’t speak.

  Looking at her flushed, averted face, Brian was filled with compassionate tenderness. His heart began to beat very hard. With a mixture of fear and exultation he realized that something extraordinary, something irrevocable had happened.

  And then, he went on to think, there was that time, some four or five months later, when they were staying together at her uncle’s house in East Sussex. Away from her parents, she was as though transformed – not into another person; into her own fundamental self, into the happy, expansive girl that it was impossible for her to be at home. For at home she lived under constraint. Her father’s chronic grumblings and occasional outbursts of bad temper oppressed her with fear. And though she loved her, she felt herself the prisoner of her mother’s affection, was dimly conscious of being somehow exploited by means of it. And finally there was the cold numbing atmosphere of the genteel poverty in which they lived, the unremitting tension of the struggle to keep up appearances, to preserve social superiority. At home, it was impossible for Joan to be fully herself; but there, in that spacious house at Iden, among its quiet, easy-going inhabitants, she was liberated into a transfiguring happiness. Dazzled, Brian fell in love with her all over again.