The Last Summer Page 12

  “I will eventually but I have to explain things first. You see Janet is more like you in a way than she is like me. She comes from a village just like you. And I’m a townsboy and therefore suspected of corruption. Do you realise that when I played records for her all the records she’d ever heard were crummy old Gaelic ones, like big plates? The fact is you must understand she has old-fashioned ideas.”

  “All right. Carry on.”

  “Well in any case I’m beginning to think that she’s falling for you. Just a few hints here and there. Like for instance she keeps asking questions about you. She’s become interested in you. She’s curious. And of course, let’s face it, I’ve gone out with one or two other girls, not schoolgirls, I may say, town girls. You know the type.” He said this in a man-of-the-world way as if he expected Malcolm really to know. Malcolm was obscurely flattered.

  “As I was saying, if we were living in the eighteenth century we would fight a duel but clearly we can’t do that in the twentieth century even though there is a war. Do you realise we’ve been going out now for about two years? It’s a long time,” he added.

  “It’s not all that long,” said Malcolm.

  “Oh don’t think I want to get rid of her or anything like that. In fact it was partly she who suggested it. Well shall I say the two of us really talked about it.” He paused. “Have you ever read the Red Star?” he asked.

  Malcolm said no, briefly.

  “No I don’t suppose you would have,” said Ronny, the corner of his mouth twitching. “It’s not exactly the kind of book Collins would approve of, though I’m not so sure that it’s so far away from Dido and Aeneas if it comes to that. To tell you the truth I hadn’t either till I met Janet. I thought it was some kind of Communist paper. Shall I tell you some of the stories they have? Well, most of them are about doctors and nurses. The doctor is usually young and often turns out to be married though the nurse doesn’t know this. One story I read told of a nurse so infatuated with the doctor that she took the job as his wife’s companion—the wife you understand being a cripple—and made her life a misery. She would come to her in the middle of the night and whisper the most hellish things to her and dress up and make ghost appearances. In the morning she was as fresh as a daisy and then when the woman complained the doctor and the nurse got her put in a mental home. That’s one story. Of course they aren’t all like that. Some are really about true love all dewy fresh. Are you following me?”

  “Yes, I can appreciate that you’ve read the Red Star but I don’t see the point.”

  “The point is very obvious. You see that’s the kind of mind Janet has. Mind you, as I said before, this is nothing against her. It’s just her way. She doesn’t pretend to be intellectual. That’s part of her charm. Well, the other night—I don’t know how it started but anyway it came to the point where we decided to test each other. As I said we’ve been going out for two years or so. How do you know, she asked me, whether we really love each other? How do we know that our love will last? She talks like that you know. Part of this started because I turned up late one night at the flicks though it wasn’t my fault. Are you following me?”

  “Well,” said Malcolm, “and what does the Red Star have to do with all this?”

  Ronny moodily kicked at a pebble. “As I said, I don’t know how it started but it came round to the fact that we should go out once or twice with someone else and see whether we remained true to each other afterwards. That’s what it came down to. You with Janet and me with Miriam, if she will go out with me, though I imagine she’s a bit strait-laced.”

  “Of all the cold-blooded schemes,” said Malcolm. “I don’t believe Janet ever agreed to this. I’m sure it must be your plan.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask her? What do you think of it anyway? I’m telling you she lives in the world of the Red Star. I’m beginning to live in it myself.”

  “What do I think of it?” said Malcolm. “I think it is absolutely crazy, egotistical and mad. In any case, I doubt if Miriam would have anything to do with you. She’s far too religious.”

  Ronny smiled brightly: “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think she might well come out with me. The point is you must not tell her anything about this.”

  Malcolm got to his feet. “Look, you do what you like but I’m having no part of this. If Janet will come out with me in her own way that’s all right, but I’m not getting mixed up in any scheme of this kind.”

  “So you’re going to run away then?” said Ronny, looking up at him quietly. “Just like Aeneas. How do you know this isn’t her way of getting rid of me and putting you in my place? How do you know? You can’t tell, can you?”

  Malcolm sat down again. “What has Aeneas to do with this?”

  “Oh, I just thought about it. The other day you were all for risk. You were against Aeneas because you called him a prig. It just struck me a minute ago when you were acting so self-righteous that that was a perfect illustration of people talking without any meaning. Mind you, I thought so at the time as well. You really think that literature has nothing to do with life.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Well, you act like it.”

  “If it gives you any satisfaction. I will tell you that I don’t believe that for a moment and I can’t understand how you could have got hold of such an idea.”

  “All right then. You’re unwilling to accept the challenge, aren’t you? You’re unwilling to match yourself against me. That’s the challenge. Can you take her away from me? What could be fairer than that? You’ve got your chance. You’re being handed it on a plate.

  “The fact is,” he continued quietly, “I like Janet a lot. Naturally I can see her weaknesses. You may have thought I was being flippant but she is by far the prettiest girl in this school. She has great qualities you know. And she’s strictly honourable. She insists on paying her own way though she’s not rich. Why, one day my father took us out in the car and she insisted on paying for part of her dinner. God knows where she got the money from because her parents are quite poor. So you see I’m not doing it because I don’t like her. It’s just that we had this idea. The fact is I’m frightened of losing her. She’s a bit confused at the moment and I don’t believe she’ll have anything to do with you after your first night at the cinema. Still, that’s up to you. You’re getting your chance. I guarantee if you ask her to go out with you she’ll go and after that all’s fair in love and war.”

  “Well, what can I lose?” said Malcolm to himself, and the element of the challenge was important. He didn’t like the assured way in which Ronny had said that she wouldn’t go out with him after the first night at the cinema. To go with her to the cinema, to speak to her for the whole night, just the two of them, to walk perhaps down the promenade after they had come out of the cinema, all these things sounded so much like gifts offered him by the gods that the very thought of them weakened him. That perfect face with the perfect lips, the clear earnest laughing eyes, the body swelling with its youthful promise, the self-confidence and pride of beauty secure in its own power, surely that could not be for him? Surely not? But here he was being told that they were for him if he chose. And really it fitted very well. Ronny was a gambler by nature. It would appeal to some ironic quirk in his nature to make this test and find that he had won after all. Perhaps he was really growing bored with her. Even in the way he played football this streak of the gambler was shown. Was this riskiness a reaction against the fact that his father was a lawyer with the best practice in town? Malcolm knew that they were incomers and in fact he had often seen Ronny’s father, a small alert man with silver hair, who sized you up when he saw you as if he was wondering whether you had some business for him. Always smiling and polite and easy in his manner. And what was that about Dido and Aeneas? Had the idea come to him during that lesson? Not that the comparison was really so exact. Still, it would be typical of him that he would use this ancient story in order to fashion something new from it, to make it contemporar
y. A test. A trial. Malcolm thought a little more. Perhaps if she did agree it wouldn’t be so bad after all. And why shouldn’t she grow tired of Ronny? It wasn’t impossible. Why shouldn’t she like him—Malcolm? He wasn’t ugly. He was reasonably presentable and he wasn’t stupid. But his earlier distrust flooded over him. Why should she like him? And then again there was Miriam. Would she really go out with Ronny? It would be interesting to see. Wouldn’t it?

  Ronny was staring across at the art class. One fat pudgy girl was looking intently at a horse in the distance and trying to draw it. The old woman with her youthful curls was looking over in their direction. Malcolm could have sworn she was looking at Ronny, flirting with him in fact. Her voice was raised so that they could hear what she was saying.

  “Now, girls, Delacroix wouldn’t have drawn a horse like that. You must get at the muscles underneath.”

  Ronny rose and looked at Malcolm, a shadow falling across his brow and bisecting it into two halves, one of sunshine one of shade.

  “Well?” he said glancing at his gold watch quickly, very like his father at that moment.

  “All right,” said Malcolm, “I agree.”

  Ronny smiled with satisfaction, looking down at his fingernails like someone who might be testing a rapier.

  “I must say that I respect you for it,” he said quietly. “I like people who take risks.”

  Malcolm let him go first and then followed at a distance.

  22

  THOUGH THE SUMMER remained flawless and cloudless Malcolm’s life was entering a period of turmoil. He was preparing for his Bursary Competition and then on the other hand there was Janet and there was the football. Colin too was preparing to leave school and was looking for a job: already he had bought himself a pair of fishermen’s wellingtons as he was thinking of becoming a cook on a fishing boat. A lot of the time he was playing football: his failure had made him difficult and moody. Sometimes he took Malcolm away from his books to play against him. Malcolm weighed everything up carefully and decided that he must afford the time.

  He himself lived in a kind of euphoria accompanied by tension. Janet and he were to go to the cinema in a week’s time on the Saturday afternoon. The game between the school and the village would be coming up soon but he had had no time to look at the notice board, if a notice had in fact been put up. Sometimes the games took place in the evening, sometimes in the afternoons. He was rather worried about Colin who was determined that he must play in the game. He had had no time to visit Dicky, who had been transferred from his home to the Sanatorium, which stood on a hill on the outskirts of the town, in beautiful high wooded country. Every day he thought “I will go” but he didn’t go, for tuberculosis seemed at odds with that beautiful summer and now that Dicky was not in the village itself the obligation to visit him did not seem so pressing. One day, however, he would visit him. Images of Dicky and Janet came together in his mind. On the one hand there was Dicky who was demonstrably dying and on the other there was Janet demonstrably in the first flush of her beauty. In fact she seemed to be growing prettier every day. He felt grateful to Ronny for having given him the chance to take her out. He couldn’t be so bad after all, in spite of his supercilious manner. His attitude to Ronny had in fact changed completely. He spoke to him quite easily now: he was impressed by his cleverness and admired his poise. He was attracted by the cynicism of his conversation, by the calm disillusioned way in which he weighed up everything and everybody. Ronny was not sitting the Bursary Competition, he didn’t think it was worth his while and he had no intention of bringing kudos to the school. Only Malcolm himself and James were sitting. The latter was working very hard, seated in the library all that long summer with piles of notebooks in front of him, all of which had meticulously written on them his name and class and, inside, masses of notes in small copperplate handwriting arranged under the most exact headings. The headings were in red ink, the information in blue.

  Malcolm was thinking about Janet a lot of the time. He would speak to her oftener and they would sometimes walk from class together. She seemed gay and bright but rather tense. One day he said to her: “I wonder how Ronny is getting on with Miriam,” and she half smiled and pointed. Miriam was laughing with Ronny, looking very animated. Janet said, “He’ll soon have her reading the Red Star. You never see her with a bible now, do you? And you notice that her hair isn’t in a bun as it used to be.”

  “One lives and learns,” Malcolm thought to himself. “Who would have thought it?” Miriam’s outraged moral nature seemed to have calmed and settled as turbulent milk does. He was surprised to see Ronny leaning attentively towards her as if what she was saying to him was of great interest. “He’s taken her to the flicks already,” said Janet. “He took her to a horror film and told her it was of great literary importance. He’s like that you know.” Miriam hardly spoke to Malcolm now as if she regretted telling him so much about herself.

  “What time will you be at the cinema?” he asked Janet.

  Half surprised she said, “Oh I suppose any time. Quarter past two would be best.”

  “Yes, that will be all right,” said Malcolm. If she had said quarter past two in the morning he would have answered with the same words. He had looked up the small booklet which gave advance notice of the picture. It was a Western called “Bend in the Valley”. He asked her if she liked Westerns.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she answered. “I like the flicks. I don’t mind what it is.”

  Sometimes he would watch her as she in turn watched Ronny speaking to Miriam and he was consumed with jealousy. Once when she knew Ronny was watching she put her hand delicately on his arm and Ronny had looked over, grinning against the light.

  Why, he might even put his arm around her in the cinema!

  As he walked beside her he could smell the cool perfume which emanated from her, chaste and more desirable than a ranker one. The extraordinary thing was that Miriam’s equally cool perfume made her seem virginal and sexless.

  “What’s it like in the hostel?” he once asked her.

  She burst out laughing. “It’s just dorms. The matron’s pretty niggly. We’re not allowed out, not supposed to go out after half past nine. And we have study periods all the time.”

  “Do you do much studying?”

  “Not much,” she said kicking a twig on the ground with her toe.

  He had dreams of being married to her. He even thought he would like to visit her house.

  “Where do you stay?” he asked her.

  “Oh it’s the second house in the village,” she answered abstractedly. “But I’m hardly ever down there except at holidays. Sometimes at weekends I stay with my aunt.”

  Once he had in fact taken a run on his bicycle down to her village and identified her house, with its door painted green and high storm window. He had stayed at the side of the road while the local bus passed him and with his hands resting on the handlebars had watched the house as if he were a spy. During the course of his vigil a stout, rather somnolent woman had come out of the house scattering meal to some hens which clustered round her. From the back he could see only that she had dark hair, a rather fat body, and was wearing a bluish overall. The hens were fluttering round her hopping about and pecking and she was staring woodenly into the distance. Her hands, too, were rather fat and she seemed to walk as if in a drugged sleep. When she was finished she stood looking at the hens for a moment, slowly rubbing her hands against her overall. Once she had turned and looked at him uninterestedly, knowing that he was a stranger. Her mouth was thinner than Janet’s, the lips clamped together, the nose more pointed, and the throat fat and rather unwrinkled. She turned away indifferently after a while. A chill seemed to invade the afternoon as if a shadow had fallen and he had one last look at the house before he pedalled away—the door painted a cracked green and looking as if it had reared out of the earth around it. He couldn’t understand why he felt so desolate staring at the soundless houses and at the bluish overall as it disappe
ared into the house.

  In those days too his mother was continually pestering him. “You’re not working as hard as you should,” she would say.

  He’d curse her under his breath as he drew a Horace towards him. What was dry Horace to him? He hated Horace. He was too settled in his Roman world, a connoisseur of wine and food and gardens and little houses, always nattering on about exile. He didn’t like the poets of the eighteenth century either. Pope he intensely disliked. His favourites were Wordsworth and Tennyson and some of Kipling’s poems which went with a terrific swing.

  Sheila too was becoming rather troublesome to him. When he went to their house she would be in the room most of the time. He would play a game of draughts with her father and she would stand behind him watching. He won most of the games because her father wasn’t really Dicky’s standard. He was a big open-faced fisherman who always had a glass of beer on the table when he was playing and who would drink some, thereafter wiping his moustache, before making a move.

  “Ah, some day I’ll beat you,” he would say humorously, not really believing it and not caring if he did or not.

  Sheila wouldn’t say anything but would simply stand there watching. He was often put off his game by her presence for she seemed to exude an animal warmth which troubled his mind. One of these days he would lose a game because of her. But after he had left the house she never offered to walk along the road with him. Her mother would say:

  “When are you sitting the bursary?”

  He was displeased at this: he wished Sheila hadn’t told her about it. That summer the mother had a brother home from Africa with his wife and she would say to them, “Malcolm’s going to sit a bursary you know. He’s a clever boy,” and the African brother would fix a bovine eye on him in silence, his slabby hands resting on his knees.

  “I wish you wouldn’t drink that beer,” the mother would say to her husband, who would answer pacifically. “But I’m thirsty, dear. You don’t know what it’s like to be on the boat. I like to wash the salt out of my mouth.” No ambition, that was him, no ambition at all, no drive.