Guilty: The Lost Classic Novel (9 page)

It was at these evening assemblies that the Headmaster made his most sensational and most weighty announcements. Only matters concerning the whole school were thus brought up and, by being so referred to, attained exceptional importance. So everybody was most curious to hear what he had to say that night.

Most of his hearers would know, he began, that a new boy was joining their ranks; a fact only deserving of notice because connected, in this case, with a secondary and sinister
factor of the utmost significance. Never, in all the centuries of the school’s existence, had there been any deviation from the principles laid down by the original founders, one of which was the Head’s right to refuse admission to a pupil at his discretion. This right had now been summarily suppressed by a high authority he wasn’t free to name, this same authority having enforced upon him the acceptance of the boy he’d just mentioned. To some members of his audience the boy’s name might be familiar. It was a name which had been prominent in the press, receiving much publicity of widely different kinds. The boy’s father had served his country well and this fact had been recognized, making his subsequent traitorous apostasy even more odious than it would otherwise have been. Admittedly, the son was not old enough to have participated actively in his father’s guilt. But he’d been in intimate contact with loathsome doctrines, by which he must inevitably have been infected. Left to his own discretion, the Head would no more have dreamed of admitting him to the school than he would have allowed a known carrier of disease to mingle with his pupils. Authority had taken the matter out of his hands, forcing acceptance upon him with menaces, threatening dire consequences if the boy complained, either of the treatment he received here, or of disrespect to his father’s name. In these circumstances, he had to forbid all reference to the man, and to enjoin upon them a distant attitude, flavoured with suspicion, towards the son. The principal felt that he could only keep his integrity by thus taking the whole school into his confidence, warning them solemnly of the danger in their midst, while relying upon their loyalty not to bring him into further conflict with those in power. He was sure they all shared his own horror of the doctrines with which the newcomer had been contaminated. It was his duty to remind them to be always on their guard,
bearing in mind this infection carried within. Outwardly the boy was presentable; the impression he made was in some respects not unfavourable. Let them not be deceived by appearances, or his warning would have been in vain.

This speech was recorded in a volume the Head published some years later under the title ‘Words and Warnings to Youth’, from which I was able to copy it, and it explains much that was mysterious to me at the time. During my first term, while I was still unused to community life and everything still seemed strange, I was made most unhappy by the way my companions avoided me, despite all my efforts to please. Since I was, in spite of everything, a fairly normal young animal whose behaviour presented nothing unfamiliar to them, I think they’d have liked to be friendly. Some would even respond to my advances up to a point; but then, remembering the Head’s warning, or reminded of it, would withdraw hastily in confusion, to my increasing bewilderment. I really began to think there must be something about me which prohibited friendship and that I’d lived too long alone ever to have any friends.

The following term my situation improved, mainly, I think, because it was summer, when a general tendency to relax is felt in our northern climate after the ice-bound winter and chilly reluctant spring. Having, presumably, got over the indignities he’d suffered on my account, the Head didn’t repeat his warning. And as, with the passing terms, there was a larger and larger proportion of boys to whom his words were just hearsay, the memory of his speech gradually faded out: the whole affair slowly passed into a sort of legend, which finally even enhanced my reputation. Once I knew I had been accepted, and had firmly established myself, it rather gratified me to be pointed out as the villain of that old story.

Something had happened, nevertheless, in consequence of those lonely unhappy weeks I spent as a new boy, unaccountably shunned or, worse still, dropped abruptly after the first preliminary moves of friendliness. I myself was confirmed, once and for all, in the conviction that I was different from everyone else, unlovable and apart. And, whether because the distrust caution implanted in me made intimacy impossible, or for some other more obscure reason unknown to me, I never succeeded in making a really close friend. Being quite gregarious, and with a natural aptitude for all forms of sport, I wasn’t unpopular; superficially I got on well with both boys and masters. But though I had hordes of acquaintances and was rarely alone, I remained isolated in spirit, incapable of, or reluctant to, embark upon intimate friendship. It was, with every potential friend, a case of so far and no further. A point quickly came beyond which the relationship would not, could not, advance. I didn’t exactly want this to happen. But, as time went on, I accepted the pattern as inevitable and even took a sort of proud gloomy pleasure in the idea of walking alone in the midst of the crowd. All the same, I endured moments of near-panic, when I felt debarred from everything valuable and fated to be an outcast all my life.

At some point during my adolescence, I began to connect these fearful moments with a peculiar sense of vulnerability of which I’d become aware; an urgent need for protection, as though I’d been born minus some natural weapon everyone else possessed or were doomed to an unendurable fate nobody else would have to suffer. These irrational feelings were utterly real to me, the cause of much distress at this period, when for days at a time I was enveloped in nameless anxiety, of which I could speak to no one, from which I longed quite desperately to escape.

The unreal world, which used to lie so close behind the face of everyday things, had, since my coming to school, retreated further into the background, though I’d never lost touch with it altogether. So many exterior contacts had kept it in abeyance; I’d almost come to believe it was a part of the childhood I’d outgrown. Now, suddenly, I saw it as a way of escape, fulfilling my urgent need. Here was precisely what I wanted: a sanctuary always accessible to me but to no one else. Life might do its worst, if only I could elude it by taking refuge in another world where I was immune from pain. Unfortunately, the transition wasn’t under my control. So I began to practise escaping, unfocusing my eyes, conjuring up a scene from memory or imagination and willing it to take the place of reality. I could never depend on being able to pass from one world to the other in this way at will. But I did, by degrees, attain some success in crossing the borderline. As may be imagined, opportunities for practice were few and far between in a life lived in close proximity to several hundred boys; and I had a dread of anyone finding out what I was trying to do, for it was clear to me that neither this form of escapism, nor the feeling that inspired it, could be considered quite normal.

So my experiments were mostly confined to the holidays, when I had all the solitude necessary and more. Taking a sandwich for my lunch, I would walk all day over our wild windy hills, without meeting anyone but a farmer, perhaps, out with his gun. Hill behind hill, the smooth curved downs were like the backs of a concourse of whales, swimming steadily past me on every side; for I seemed so close to the high white clouds, driven ceaselessly across the blue emptiness above, that everything around me appeared to be moving. I was alone, out of all creation, treading the turning globe, while the wind sang in the shells of my ears
and thundered intermittently through the treetops of some wooded chine as I passed, constantly flattening the combed short green hair-like grass for my feet. I experienced such exhilaration then that the familiar world seemed magically extended; I felt the corridors of the universe about to open before me. And in this exalted state it was easy to accept my difference and to glory in it. Even after the authentic elation had passed, I could still acknowledge my peculiarity, not in bravado but as an essential factor, always to be taken into consideration.

The fantasy of the moving landscape and the expanding dimensions of the everyday world encouraged me to believe I was close to being accepted as a naturalized citizen of that other place, which would admit me as a refugee in flight from reality, in case of emergency.

My timeless walks, reaching out to the boundaries of infinity, may not have been the most normal of holiday occupations. But I had few alternatives. The children I’d known had all gone on to other schools, none of the boys attended the same exclusive, costly, remote one as I did, so that I’d lost touch with them all. My mother took little part, these days, in the social life of the neighbourhood and made no attempt to provide me with companions.

I didn’t realize then that there was a special reason for her isolation, neither worldly enough, nor, I’m afraid, interested enough, to wonder why she rarely went anywhere or entertained anybody. Always inclined to solitude, she had taken little notice of the local people at any time. I was scarcely aware of her growing seclusion, which was obscured by the attentions of Mr Spector. His visits were now much more frequent: when I was home for the holidays he often took us to cinemas, restaurants, theatres in the nearby towns, so that on the whole our existence seemed livelier than before.

It was my life at school that absorbed me. The people with whom I spent three-quarters of my time were so much more real that the others seemed shadowy by comparison, and even he retired into the background. I still had a great admiration for him and discussed with him all my doings, but my impression was that he purposely refrained from influencing me during this period. While we were apart I would almost forget him; and, even when we came together again, he took care not to exert that extraordinarily powerful charm which had formerly held me spellbound.

If he was a shadowy figure to me, how much less real my mother appeared. Occasionally I had a revival of the tender feelings which preceded my first term; but the drifting process, begun long before, continued steadily, and she seemed to make no effort to stop it. If I’d had a close friend, I might have discussed his attitude to his family. As it was, I could only wonder how parents who sent their young children away at the most impressionable age, for ten years or so, and for nine months out of twelve, could possibly have a satisfactory relationship with them. The rejoicings at the end of term always struck me as a little false. Personally, I was much more relieved when the holidays were over and I could return from what was merely an interruption of the main stream of my life – and, to judge from the noisy ragging which was traditional on the opening day and to which the staff turned a blind eye, my sentiments must have been general and officially approved.

Though far from studious, I always managed to scrape through my examinations by last-minute cramming and in due course attained the dignity of the sixth form. Now I had only about another year of school life before me, terminating
in the final and most important exam of all, on which much of my future depended, for directly afterwards I would be leaving.

It was, I remember, on the morning of the day I was made a prefect that I received a letter in a handwriting I didn’t recognize; but, preoccupied by my new honour and its attendant privileges and duties, I found no time to read it till late afternoon, when I was sitting in solitary state in the study which from now on would be mine alone. Then it was as though I’d been innocently going about all day with a bomb in my pocket; for the letter was from my father, who had just returned, having discovered at last, on the other side of the world, the peaceful place for which he’d been searching so long and to which he proposed to transfer his family forthwith. The ship which had brought him would remain in port for ten to fourteen days, preparing for the return trip, and during this time he would wind up his affairs and make all arrangements to leave the country for ever.

The letter contained some obscure reference to the need for haste, which I took as signs of his aberration – that peace-bee which had suddenly started to buzz so disastrously in his bonnet – for this was a disaster to me, pure and simple. He ended by saying he hadn’t yet had time to write to the Headmaster but would be doing so very shortly, and in the meanwhile I could show him this letter.

So the Head didn’t know so far; that, to me, was the one spark of hope. I still had a few more hours in which to think, to extricate myself from what could only be regarded as a catastrophe. I’d almost forgotten my father after so long. Hearing nothing from him, even his name never spoken, I’d long since ceased to think about his return. As for the crazy notion of starting life over again in some distant land, I
never had taken it seriously; yet here it was, not a dream-like possibility in the dim future but an immediate present crisis. More than anything, I think, I resented the abrupt arbitrary fashion in which I was to be uprooted, without being consulted, without even a chance to say what I thought of the uprooting. I wasn’t a child now, to be swayed by the thrill of adventure and travel. Only too clearly I saw what I’d lose by this upheaval, which would make nonsense of the years I’d spent here and turn my hard-won certificates into so much waste paper.

I’d been looking forward to a foreseeable future, among the sort of people I knew, where my school background would give me – over and above my own achievements – a definite and accepted standing, the main object of the expensive education I’d received being to bestow on the recipient an inalienable reputation that would be his for life. Now all this was to be sacrificed to the whim of an eccentric, who, in the eyes of my associates, was a traitor as well. I might have been more tolerant had my father written affectionately; but the letter was quite impersonal, ending by telling me that, since I could do nothing to expedite our departure, I might as well stay where I was for the present.