Fielding Gray Read online

  Give me a thousand kisses all your store.

  And then a hundred, then a thousand more.

  Don't be greedy. I told myself. You've had one kiss and when the time is right you'll be allowed another. That's enough. Don't go and spoil it all.

  'And so.' said the Senior Usher. 'we are to be governed by the Socialists. How pleased that dismal man Constable will be.'

  The rest of the school was out on a Field Day, which both myself and the Senior Usher had managed to evade. We were celebrating our holiday with what he called a 'discreet luncheon' accompanied by that great war-time luxury, a bottle of Algerian wine.

  'How will it affect us here, sir?'

  'A lot depends on whether or not they get in again in five years' time. Just now they've got much bigger fish to fry than us. But by about 1950 the supply will be running out. And then ...'

  'But surely, sir, they can improve the state system of education without wrecking ours? Why don't they just leave us alone?'

  'Socialists.' said the Senior Usher, 'can never leave anything alone. That's the trouble. They start with one or two things that badly need reforming, and jolly good luck to them. But then it gets to be a habit. They can't stop. And that's what'll do them in. As Macaulay has it, we can make shift to live under a debauchee or even a tyrant; but to be ruled by a busybody is more than human nature can bear.'

  'So how long do you give them? '

  The Senior Usher took a long swig of Algerian.

  'Not much more, I hope, than four years. By which time a lot of people will have stopped being grateful for the benefits and started to resent the preaching. Particularly if it is suggested that their socialist duty required them to share their new prosperity with their less fortunate brothers in other lands.' 'And that'll be the end of the socialists? '

  'For the time being ..The Senior Usher looked suddenly glum. This foul wine,' he said, 'is not improved by a thunderous atmosphere ... Yes, for the time being the end of the socialists and, I hope, of our dreary friend Constable. But just at present he's in the ascendant, and I must give you a solemn warning.' 'Warning, sir?'

  'Yes. Although you made none too good an impression on him back in May, he was interested by your ambition to become a don. So he has written to me to inquire about you. He may hate my guts but he respects my judgment. In his way, he's a very just man.'

  'What did you tell him?'

  'That it was early days yet but I thought you showed great promise. I added that I should be very surprised if you didn't turn your minor scholarship into one of the top awards next April.'

  'Thank you, sir. But what has this to do with a warning?' 'Ah. Because of your behaviour when he met you. Constable has got it into his head that you are frivolous. He suspects your motives. He thinks you want to be a don because it is a pleasant way of life.'

  'There's a lot in that,' I said.

  'Of course there is, and no one but a prig like Constable would resent it. But as it is, you're handicapped - doubly handicapped. As an economist, Constable in any case tends to regard us classical scholars as parasites. And here you are cheerfully admitting to the status.'

  'But I don't admit to the status.'

  'You admit - to me - that you're out for enjoyment?' 'Among other things.'

  'Then by Constable's standards you are a self-acknowledged parasite.'

  'What am I meant to do? Exterminate myself?'

  'You must try to disguise the fact that you are enjoying yourself. For Constable's benefit, you must turn scholarship into a duty. You must regard a fellowship as a high vocation.'

  'But surely, sir, Mr. Constable's not typical of the entire college?'

  'No. But he holds an important office in it. Now I've had time to think about it more closely, it's clear that Lancaster have been very shrewd in appointing him. It's clear that they saw the way the wind was blowing and installed Robert Constable as a valuable piece of camouflage.'

  'Mixed metaphor.'

  'Don't be pert. Their scheme is that Constable, as Tutor of the College, should go through a conspicuous routine of labour and sorrow for the benefit of the socialist authorities, while the rest of them are left in peace to pursue their own amusements.'

  'Then they'll be on my side?'

  'Likely enough. But they won't put themselves out to protect you from Constable. He's got too important a function to fulfil: he's both a concession to and a defence against the demands of the socialist conscience. For the time being they'll let him have his way.'

  'Like you said that Sunday? Let him sell the port and grow cabbages on the front lawn?'

  'I doubt,' said the Senior Usher, 'whether they'll go as far as that. But they certainly won't make an issue over you'

  As the days went on the clouds on the horizon continued to sulk there and hour by hour the air became heavier with their threat.

  'Bad for the nerves,' Peter Morrison said. 'And now, Fielding, a word in your ear.'

  We went to Peter's study. Although the window was wide open, the little room was like an oven and smelt, very faintly, of Peter's feet, for it was his custom to work with his shoes off.

  'Your little thing with Christopher,' said Peter. 'I don't want to seem censorious. It's happened to us all at one time or another. But that's the point. In your case the time has now come to stop.'

  'Nothing's really started.'

  Peter shook his head in gentle reproof.

  'Something's started all right,' he said; 'the only question is how to stop it before it's too late. It's not a question of morals. Fielding. It's just that you're now too important a person to be found out. At this stage whatever happened to you would affect everybody. Corruption in high places: drums beating, heads rolling. It's bad for the House, that kind of thing. It distracts people. Disturbs good order.'

  'You're preaching to the converted,' I told him. 'I don't want trouble any more than you. And I've done nothing to cause it.'

  'I know how easily the converted can relapse. Take myself ... Well, no, perhaps we'd better not do that.'

  Peter smiled, rather obliquely.

  'If you were going to offer any practical advice ... I prompted him.

  'Practical advice of any value is hard come by in this particular field. But there's one important thing I want you to get into your head. People make a lot of fuss about all this. They talk of boys being perverted for life by their experiences at their public schools, and they then maintain that this is why, quite apart from any question of abstract morality, it's so vital to keep the place "pure". But what they can't or won't realize,' Peter said, almost angrily for him, 'is that it's not what two boys do together in private which does the permanent damage, but the hysterical row which goes on if they get caught.'

  'I'm not quite with you.'

  'Well, then. Two boys disappear into the bushes. Once, twice, twenty times. They get a lot of pleasure from one another, but other things being equal it does not become a permanent taste, because they grow up and go out into a wider world which offers richer diversions. All right?'

  'All right.'

  'But supposing they're found out. Drama, tears, denunciation, letters to parents, threats of expulsion, endless inquisition: when, how often, with whom, where, how ... And by the time that little lot's over, what would have been just a casual experience, not much more than an accident, has become ... momentous, obsessive. It has been branded on to the very core of memory and feeling. It has become something which is always with you, like a wound which will be there and keep reopening for the rest of your life. A trauma, I think the psychologists call it. But the wound was not inflicted, in most cases, by the original incident, only by the savage insistence ... by the vengefulness ... of those who chanced to find the secret out. And indeed the reactions of authority can be so extreme that they affect not only the boys immediately accused but anyone else round the place who has ever done the same thing himself. Even, perhaps, those who are completely innocent. The whole atmosphere is charged with guilt, fear and
fascination. It's like this thunder hanging over us now. Can you wonder that the public schools turn out so many ... so called ... homosexuals?'

  'You seem to have gone into it with some care.'

  'It was no more than my duty. When I became head of this House. I had to determine how I could meet my responsibilities, how I would cope with whatever might crop up - this included.'

  'And you decided that the best way was to leave people to amuse themselves in peace?'

  'Let's just say that I wished the topic to be as unobtrusive as possible. Which is why I am so anxious that you, a person of prominence, should not run the risk of stirring up a conspicuous scandal. Others, you should remember, are less tolerant that I am.'

  'Others?'

  'In a place like this there are always inquisitive people. You don't need me to tell you.'

  'No. I don't. Because I told you a long time ago - and it's still true - that I've given up ... games in the woods. I've done nothing with Christopher. Nothing whatever.'

  'Keep it that way,' said Peter briskly; 'that's all.'

  Peter's warning was obviously well meant, and it set me thinking. From the age of thirteen and a half, as Peter well knew, I had amused myself with a variety of boys and without any ill effects. But I had been lucky never to be found out, and knowing this, I had turned over a new leaf, for purely practical reasons, when I had become a monitor - 'a person of prominence' as Peter put it - a few months before. At this stage one simply could not afford trouble. There was also another point: ought not one to be putting away childish things by now and graduating towards women? But what might have been a firm decision never to touch a boy again had been weakened almost from the start, by two further considerations: first, that there were not, as yet, any women towards whom to graduate; and second, that it was now quite clear to me, from my reading of Greek and Latin literature, that one could have the best of both worlds. If Horace. Catullus and countless poets of the Greek anthology could have boys as well as girls, then why shouldn't I? It was of no use for the Senior Usher to point out that these authors had been superseded by the Christian morality, for that morality, with its nagging and its whining, I merely despised.

  Nevertheless, for the last few months prudence had prevailed. The only danger of relapse had been Christopher, and since he was clearly resolved to impose strict limits the danger did not seem to be very serious. I was far too fond to force him (for that matter I had never forced anybody) and I was unwilling (don't be greedy) even to try to persuade him. Peter, who was very shrewd and knew both Christopher and myself very well, presumably realized this. Then why his warning?

  It could only be, I decided, just because he knew us so well. Perhaps my prudence was a frailer vessel than I thought, and Peter had spotted this. Even so, that still left my terror of offending Christopher. Yes; but could it be that Peter had also spotted something else, in Christopher this time, that gave him cause for worry? Was this the reason for his warning - that Peter had seen, as I had not, signs that Christopher, for all his delicacy, might give way after all? Signs that determination was softening into mere reluctance, and that this in turn ...

  And so it was that Peter, by warning me against what I had in any case thought to forgo, first taught me that it might yet be achieved.

  'Busy, Christopher?'

  'Trying to get ready for this exam tomorrow. Geography.'

  'I'll just sit here and keep quiet.'

  'All right. But I must work.'

  So I perched my bottom on the little bookcase behind his chair, put my hands on his neck, and started to massage his shoulder blades.

  'Please don't.'

  'Just go on with your work, Christopher. This will soothe you.'

  'It doesn't. It... I'm sorry. Fielding, but please go.'

  'All right. Can I come back later? '

  'Come back and talk to me ... talk to me. Fielding ... after adsum. If I've finished this.'

  Christopher sighed, very gently.

  'Come anyway,' he said.

  Exams.

  “'Cum semcl occideris, et de te splendida Minos Fecerit arbitria;

  Non Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te Restituet pietas.”

  “'When once you are dead and Minos has pronounced his high judgment upon you, not your lineage, Torquatus, nor all your eloquence - nor even your very virtue will bring you back I again”.'

  I paused, I remember, and I thought: now for it, now let 'em have it straight. Then I wrote:

  The passage is crucial. Moralists of the sternest persuasion would readily agree with Horace that neither high birth nor clever words can recommend the soul in the face of final judgment. But then the poet puts in his hammer blow:

  'non te

  Restituet pietas.”

  Not virtue itself is going to be any help. All in fact, is vanity: not only gold and silver, not only worldly fame and accomplishment, but duty, faith and purity too. The highest moral character can procure one no preference among the shades.

  I handed in my essay paper (I remember) and walked outside. There was an end of the year's exams, from which, with luck, I would pick up a prize or two. The results would not be known until the last day of the quarter. Meanwhile, there were seven days to pass and nothing to do except enjoy them. There would be a cricket match between the Scholars and the Rest, the finals of the House Matches, the junior boxing and swimming. And other sports? Ever since Peter's warning I had been watching Christopher with new eyes. It was possible. I was almost certain of that now. And without offending him? Yes; my body did not offend him, I knew that, he was simply nervous because it had never happened to him before. If I chose the right moment, went about it the right way, all would be well. And without scandal (Peter's voice insisted)? But no one need ever discover. And one thing above all was certain: no amount of chastity would prolong the passing summer or bring me back from the shades.

  That night, at last, the storm broke, clearing the air and the sky. The next clay's sun dried out the cricket pitches for the carnival matches that would close the season's play; and the weather was now set fair (or so it seemed) for ever and a day. From being sluggish and sullen, everyone turned warmhearted and gay - except for Somerset Lloyd-James, who had never been known to be either and was in any case brooding over some problem which for the time being he declined to reveal.

  The Scholars versus the Rest of the School was to be a full day's match. So far from being a traditional fixture, this contest had never occurred before and had been promoted this year largely by the efforts of the Senior Usher (a great cricket fancier) on the strength of the unusual number of good players in the Sixth and Under-Sixth Classical. He was said to have backed the Scholars heavily at odds of two to one laid by the Master of the Lower School; whether this was true I never found out. but if so the odds were fair, for the Scholars, while distinguished by style and promise, were opposed by a much tougher and more experienced team which included eight members of the School XI.

  The morning's play was dull. Batting first in easy conditions, the Scholars fiddled and finicked around for a full hour, at the end of which they could only show 30 runs on the board for a cost of three wickets. At this stage I went in myself and managed with the steady support of a young scholar called Paget, to put on fifty odd in the same number of minutes - only to be dismissed, just as I was very well set, by a gross full toss which I mistimed and lobbed straight into Christopher's hands at mid-on. Soon afterwards the players came in for lunch in the pavilion, the Scholars' score now standing at 120 for 5 - which, since the wicket was plumb and the out-field fast, was at best an indifferent performance.

  Lunch, with a barrel of beer, was put up and presided over by the two pedagogues whose money allegedly rode on the match. It was a good lunch (as lunches then went), and to add to the pleasure of the occasion several distinguished non-playing guests had been invited, among them the two external examiners of the Sixth Classical, the Headmaster, and as the 'school personality', Somerset Lloyd-Ja
mes, who was sitting next to myself. Always a greedy boy when opportunity offered, Somerset now rapidly emptied three pots of beer and inspected me with the glazed look in his eye which meant (as I knew from four years' experience) that he was after help or information of more than usual importance.

  'It would appear,' he said a bit thickly, 'that the biggest prize of all lies between you and me.'

  'What does?' I said, somewhat inattentive, as I had just seen the Senior Usher point me out to one of the examiners, a tubby and voluble Warden from Oxford, and start whispering in his ear.

  'The position of Head of the School next summer. The place is taken until April. After that it will be between the two of us.'

  'Will it? Who told you?'

  'I have my sources.'

  'Why do we have to talk about it now? April's a long way off.'

  'I thought you'd like to know.'

  'And I suppose you want to know something in return.'

  Somerset's eyes went more glassy than ever.

  'If you've any ... views ... on the situation?'

  'Well. I shan't grudge you the crown if you get it. And I hope you can say the same. All right?'

  Apparently it was, for Somerset now started shovelling food very fast into his face, and I became involved in an up-table conversation with the tubby Warden, who wanted to know about the reaction of my contemporaries to the Fleming Report on the future of the public schools. Having acquitted myself as best I could, I started to think again about the very odd exchange which Somerset, à propos of nothing at all, had introduced, and was just about to take the matter up with him, when commotion arose at the far end of the table. Old Frank, one of the umpires of the day, had collapsed on to his plate.

  The Senior Usher, as principal host, took immediate command. Without moving an inch from his seat and merely by giving quiet and terser instructions to those near him (including the Headmaster and the Warden) he had, within ten minutes, established that Frank was seriously ill, administered immediate succour, procured an ambulance, despatched Frank, arranged a private room for him in hospital, comforted Christopher (to whom the old gentleman had been talking when he collapsed), convinced everyone that there was nothing more to worry about, and appointed Somerset, who was a pundit if not a performer, to be umpire in lieu. Part dismayed by the event, part titillated by guilty excitement and part overcome by admiration of the Senior Usher's expertise, I clean forgot the peculiar turn in Somerset's conversation (for I had never been much interested in the topic itself, only curious as to why it had been so inappropriately broached) and did not give it another thought for several weeks.