Guilty: The Lost Classic Novel (7 page)

He had a real gift, Mr Spector, of explaining difficult or obscure matters in terms suited to his audience, and I’m sure any parent or schoolmaster would have admired his presentation of the facts of life for my benefit, getting them forth without prudery or sentiment but simply and with delicacy of feeling. At first I listened sleepily, only half attending, but by degrees my interest was engaged, as it was bound to be by so absorbing a subject. He could have chosen no better way of diverting my thoughts from my mother’s extraordinary attack. And when she came back after being out of the room a long time, we were talking as if nothing out of the usual had happened.

Whether she took her cue from us or had already decided to ignore the incident, I don’t know, but anyhow she, too, acted as if everything were perfectly normal for the rest of the visit. Nor did she refer to her accusation when the two of us were alone, either that evening or at any time subsequently.

In a way her silence was a relief, yet in another way I resented it, as indicating my unimportance to her, not even worth an explanation of such hurtful, insulting words. I was more aware after this of the coldness, and the gap between us seemed wider.

We were both on edge during the next few days, and once, when she called me Marko (she still occasionally, to
my annoyance, used this babyish name, originally given to tell me apart from my father, whose name was Mark, too), I lost my temper completely, said it sounded as if she were calling a dog and that I refused to answer to it any more. Why should I, after all, when there was no longer anyone to distinguish me from?

I can still see the little nervous jerky movement she made only when she was upset, glancing over her shoulder, as if some imp might have heard, exclaiming, ‘How can you speak like that? Do you want to bring your father bad luck?’

Though I knew it was rude and heartless, I only laughed. Surely she wasn’t so superstitious? She said no more, but, giving me a reproachful look, went out of the room – though not before I’d caught the glint of tears in her eyes.

I felt mean and ashamed. But I also felt she had taken an unfair advantage of me. Why couldn’t she have got angry instead of crying, so that I could have answered back?

My thoughts kept reverting to her unwithdrawn accusation, and the unmistakably genuine agitation she’d shown while making it, which for some reason I could not fathom, disturbed me almost as much. Nor could I understand why my mind, as if of its own accord, had arrived at the conclusion that Mr Spector was much more closely connected with the incident than his judicial calm would have had me believe. In fact, the whole thing was a complete puzzle to me and a weight on my spirit.

No doubt I’d have forgotten it in due course. But before there was time for this, after an interval much shorter than usual, he reappeared. For the first time I felt slightly uncomfortable before him and was glad that he took my mother off at once to talk business, while I, the day being windless and sunny, though still very cold, announced that I’d go for a walk and retired to the privacy of the treehouse.

The word ‘business’ had for me lifelong associations with dullness and exclusively adult mysteries I neither wished, nor was expected, to understand, so that I felt excused from further attention and could relax with my unreal characters and their adventures, unperplexed by problems of grown-up behaviour. I became so absorbed in what I was reading that I didn’t notice the two familiar figures emerge from the cottage till it was too late to think of escape. Now I was in an awkward dilemma, unable to declare my presence without declaring myself a liar and giving away my secret refuge as well. I could only keep quiet and try to escape the guilt of eavesdropping by making myself deaf to the conversation below, becoming so immersed in my book that I ceased to be aware of the speakers, as I did in the car.

All the same, I disliked extremely the idea of deceiving Mr Spector, particularly as, with the superstition I’d ridiculed in my mother, I was half afraid he would
not
be deceived but would somehow detect my presence, though I knew I couldn’t be seen from below. I tried unsuccessfully to persuade myself that he’d excuse me in the circumstances, growing more and more nervous, as to become oblivious proved beyond me – there was no car noise to help me now, and the speakers, unaware of the need for caution, didn’t lower their voices. In the quiet garden, my mother’s emotional tones rang out so distinctly that I couldn’t fail to hear every word.

‘I might as well be a widow. I wish I were. At least I’d be free then, not in this impossible position, neither married nor unmarried but simply tied. Why should I have all the responsibility of marriage and nothing else while he goes about perfectly free? It’s so unfair, leaving me here to bear it all alone. A boy needs a father; Mark’s growing up without knowing his father at all. And what about me? I’m still
young, but I won’t be young for ever. Time keeps passing. Am I never to have a husband? Love? A real marriage?’

They had passed now and, their backs towards me, were walking away. But her complaining voice still hung on the hushed winter air, though I could no longer make out the words. Those I’d already heard, striking at the roots of all that was safe and settled in life, caused me a moment of childish panic. Their two figures had reached the shadow of the cottage crossing the sunlit grass like dark water. For a second I had the illusion of watching two strangers on the bank of a river, towards which the man seemed to be urging his reluctant companion, as if urging her to take the plunge. Growing more composed as they turned back to approach me again, I saw with my normal vision that my mother was calmer, Mr Spector doing most of the talking.

My heart gave a sudden jump at the sound of my name. Yes, it was my future he was now speaking about so earnestly, recommending that I should be sent to the school originally chosen for me, where an unexpected vacancy had come up at half-term. This was what I wanted more than anything, and my rather negative feelings for him swung to the other extreme: wonderful, kind, omnipotent Mr Spector, for whom the word ‘impossible’ didn’t exist! I could hardly listen to my mother objecting that it wouldn’t be fair to me or my father, that I’d be teased and bullied because of his views till I began to hate him. What rubbish! And why couldn’t she see that if Mr Spector wished it to be so, so it would be? Never doubting that he was acting out of kindness and for my good, I identified myself with him completely, first impatient, then irritated, finally alarmed, by her persistent opposition. Suppose he took offence at her unusual obstinacy or simply got bored and abandoned the subject, abandoning me to my fate? He’d
already carried on the argument on my behalf longer than could reasonably be expected of him.

But her opposition appeared only to make him more determined, to judge by the way he put his hand on her arm, forcing her to stop and, leaning slightly towards her, continued to speak in a low but vehement tone, bringing all his powers of dominance and persuasion to bear upon her. They were standing just below me; I could actually
feel
the intensity of his will fixed upon her. But instead of reassuring me it had the reverse effect. All at once I became uneasy and my excitement faltered.

Why should he be so eager for me to go to school? What did it matter to him? She murmured some further objection I didn’t catch, which he at once overruled, keeping her all the time under his fixed and compulsive gaze. Such intensity seemed somehow excessive and disturbing, altogether too much to be displayed over my humble affairs. My uneasiness was now reinforced by a sense of mystification and doubt; something seemed to be going on under the surface of things which I didn’t understand but which concerned me closely nevertheless.

They were already starting to walk away again, and I saw that she was about to give in, as I’d known she would do in the end. But now I suddenly found I’d changed sides. No longer under the man’s spell, I felt uncertain and troubled. The thought that he wants to get rid of me, get me out of the way, flashed through my mind like lightning on a dark night, illuminating everything for a second, and then was gone.

Though I was too immature to grasp the idea, it had shaken my trust in him. I suddenly wanted to warn my mother, to let her know I was with her and against him. Was it some premonition of future events that made me want to
run after her, seize her hand and hold her back from where she was going? Though I could have no adult understanding of her predicament, I must have felt an instinctive sympathy, for I remember thinking how frail and helpless she looked, how easily crushed, beside this large ruthless man, whom I saw as one with his great powerful car. What chance had she against him? Listening to the meaningless rise and fall of their receding voices, I tried vainly to think of some way of helping her. Poor star-crossed creature, lonely and discontented, she was denied even my childish support in the unequal contest between her defencelessness and the power of his worldly experience.

The sound of their voices ceased; they’d passed out of my field of vision. I waited a little, wondering if they would come back to this part of the garden, then, as I neither saw nor heard any more of them, realized they must have gone indoors.

Immediate restlessness overcame my disquiet. I could remain no longer in that restricted space. Cramped and chilled, I scrambled down to the ground, looking back once at the tree deliberately, with the thought that I’d probably made use of it as a hiding place for the last time. A new life, full of thrilling adventures and possibilities, lay before me. At last I was about to break out of the narrow compartment of childhood that had confined me so long. As if to leave it all behind me forthwith, I started walking away from the yew at a brisk pace, not noticing where I was going, absorbed in enthralling fantasies of the future.

My elation, however, quickly subsided, undermined by obscure forebodings. I couldn’t help being aware of an inner discomfort growing stronger and more assertive at every step, till it occurred to me that I was really walking through the frozen fields to correct my untruthfulness on at least
this one point. My conscience reminding me how I’d deceived Mr Spector, I at once turned back, deeply ashamed. How was I to face him? Should I pretend to know nothing about the conversation? But I knew I couldn’t do that. My guilt would betray me; he’d certainly see through the pretence, if he didn’t already know I’d been in the tree. The only thing was to be perfectly honest with him, but I had grave doubts of my ability to carry through this bold decision. I seemed to be more afraid of him than I’d realized.

The sun had gone down some minutes earlier, and the short winter day was ending when I arrived back at the cottage, where the big black car stood, monumental in the fading light. My childish imagination pictured some huge primeval beast crouching there, immobile but strangely watchful, a curious air of baleful alertness in the armoured snout and huge lamp-eyes swivelled slightly towards me. For a moment I wanted to turn and run, and though I continued to advance it was more and more reluctantly, keeping my eyes on the ground to avoid seeing the monster I identified with the man I’d deceived.

When next I looked up, darkness seemed appreciably nearer and so, of course, did the car. I had got quite close to it when, to my horror, the indistinct shape of the owner himself loomed up before me. Again seized by an impulse of flight, involuntarily, I turned away, then, disgusted by my cowardice, forced myself to confront him.

In the dusk, he looked to me larger and heavier, somehow menacing, indefinably changed, the same and yet not the same. I suppose my long acquaintance with the idea of magic gave me the notion that he must be two people at once, passing from one personality to the other as I moved between my two worlds. The idea itself alarmed me less than the obscure perception of characteristics not exactly
benevolent in the second strange self, by which it seemed I might have been used for unimaginable ends. Yet my feeling for the man as a whole was unaffected or, if anything, heightened by the new factor of his dual being, which established, I felt, a more personal private bond between us. My greatest wish was to receive his forgiveness, and I immediately told him exactly what had occurred. I needn’t have worried about not being brave enough to confess, for confession seemed my one hope. I completed the agitated account for my own sake, convinced now that I’d been right in suspecting he’d known about my deceit all along. I told him everything and became silent; there was no more I could do. I had thrown myself on his mercy and must await the verdict. If only he would forgive me and take me back into favour again! If he were to remain alienated from me I felt I couldn’t bear it, as if our relationship meant more to me than anything in the world.

It can only have been for a very few seconds that he gazed at me after I’d finished speaking. But an eternity of silent twilight seemed to elapse, while I felt his unseen eyes delving into me with their strange penetrating intensity, exploring depths of the very existence of which in my childish being I wasn’t aware, as though he were investigating me, not only as the child I was now but as the potential being liable to appear at subsequent stages of my development. But, when he finally spoke, he said only, ‘I’m glad you told me; otherwise …’ leaving the phrase incomplete, with a slightly menacing sound. Long afterwards, it struck me that the situation could have been one of his mysterious tests, and I wondered, if so, whether I’d failed completely or, to a limited extent, redeemed myself by confessing, as I was inclined to hope might have been the case.

He moved his hand then, I remember, and a small light
came on in the car among the dials and switches, casting a weird upward glow on his face, which, against the dusk, appeared larger than life, indestructible-looking and not quite human; a graven-image effect, lasting only an instant, before some slight change of attitude restored the Mr Spector I’d always known.

The formidable stranger had vanished without a trace, and, at the sight of my genial friend, unable to contain myself, I sprang towards him and grasped his hand, so overjoyed to feel his goodwill that I kept babbling promises, explanations, apologies, hardly knowing what I was saying, only delighted because I wasn’t rebuffed. My overwhelming gratitude for forgiveness would, with the slightest encouragement, have led me into some fantastic extravagance – I’d have gone down on my knees before him or burst into tears kissing his hand – but, since I saw that any such demonstration would be unwelcome, these confused protestations were my only emotional outlet.