In the Time of Greenbloom (10 page)

Fisher stayed with Marston for a few minutes and then came over to him.

“You've cut his eye, Blaydon,” he said.

“Go away!” said John. He felt noble. He was enjoying the blood and the pain. If this were the worst that anybody could do to him he despised them all. If Fisher loathed Marston, if Marston loathed himself, and if the Toad loathed all three of them and wanted them to suffer, then, once they had suffered they were beyond him and there was no longer any need to be afraid of anything.

“You've got a better reach,” Fisher whispered urgently. “Use it, Blaydon, and you'll beat him; you'll spoil his beauty like Jack Dempsey in America.”

“Fizz off!” said John. “You stink like a fish.”

In the third round they fought all the time. What Fisher had advised was sound: John never allowed Marston to remain close to him. He darted in, hit or was hit by him, and then backed away; the blows no longer hurt either of them; they were like drunken supermen, out of breath, their gloves as heavy as Sussex flints and their legs and feet clumsy and unimportant. They both bled freely, and in the engagement of their eyes there was no longer any hatred, only a dull hostility, an unspoken agreement that they could no longer harm one another and that they had lost all interest in what they were supposed to be doing, only waiting without even impatience to return to their beds.

At the end of the round, the Toad sent Fisher upstairs and still leaning against the bars, addressed them:

“As I said before, there is to be no discussion of this either
now or at any time in the future. As far as the rest of the School is concerned you were caught fighting in the Browns and then given the usual opportunity of settling your differences in the Gym. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“Very well then, see that you obey me.”

“Yes sir.”

“You both fought reasonably well; but I think I should tell you that if anything of this sort occurs again, you will both leave the School immediately.”

“Yes sir.”

“Marston, you may go. Wash and return to your cubicle. Blaydon, come here. I think you should know that your Mother telephoned the school this evening and that Mr Bedgebury has consented to your attending your brother's wedding in London tomorrow. In view of the fact that you did your rather poor best tonight I shall recommend that your punishment drill be deferred until Tuesday of next week.”

“Oh thank you sir.”

“You had better see Matron first thing in the morning about that eye of yours.”

“All right sir.”

“Cut along now.” Remaining as he was the Toad reached out and switched off all the lights.

John left him there filling his pipe in the darkened Gymnasium and followed Marston up the wooden stairs to the Browns.

Binns, the Badger's chauffeur, took him down to the station in the morning and saw him on to the train.

It had been arranged by Mother on the telephone that he should take a taxi straight to St Juliana's and meet the family there at eleven o'clock. He was sorry in a way that the wedding was so early because it meant that he could not have lunch on the train and he loved lunch on the train. He had the change
from two pound notes in his pocket, enough to have lunch
and
a bottle of cider; enough to sit in the Pullman with the frosty fields streaming past the window, with the wires sagging down the glass and being punched rhythmically upwards again silently and inevitably by each telegraph-pole all the way to London.

He knew that this morning he was looking white and queer, and therefore most especially he would have liked cider today; it would have restored his self-confidence and made him feel splendidly noticeable. When they went through a tunnel he could see his reflection in the window: the ugly girth of the upper lip, his left eye smaller than his right owing to the swelling of the lid where Marston had hit him in the second round.

He wondered what they would all think when they saw him; probably it wouldn't even be worth making out that it had been an heroic fight, a question of honour, because they wouldn't be interested. Mostly they would all be looking at David and Prudence in the way people did at weddings, greedily, as though there were something special about them that might never show or be seen again. But Victoria would notice; she would wonder what had happened to him. She might not like him because of it, it might embarrass her and make her decide to ignore him and pay attention to someone else. But he didn't think so; she wasn't like that, and as soon as he could explain in a roundabout way that but for her it would never have happened, she might even be pleased that he'd fought for her. Yes she might; and if she were pleased it would have been worth it.

He sat farther back in his corner and looked at the other people in the carriage. They were all very correct and old; nobody young except himself. They seemed to be annoyed at having to travel together, sat very carefully in their own places with their own things above them on the rack and their own papers handbags pipes and magazines in their hands. They would obviously have liked it better if the seats had been sub-divided by glass partitions with little blinds that could
be drawn down so that they would not have to know whether or not anyone was next to them; and yet, if the train crashed, if there were lurches and shrieks from the wheels on the rails, thumpings rendings and tearings from the front or the rear and a few people killed, they would probably be very kind and very friendly, sharing their thermos flasks and biscuits with the dying and with one another, and tearing up their shirts and pyjamas to make bandages. People always were kind when things were bad enough. However silent and separate they might have been when things were going well and they were moving safely from one place to another, they would link arms and sing when ships foundered. Perhaps Mother had been right when she had said that disaster was necessary. He was sure that when she got to Heaven she would occasionally prod God if she felt that things were going too smoothly down below.

After the Lewes stop he went into the corridor and walked down into the Guard's van. It was full of the usual leathery smell as though it had been carrying a cargo of sheepskins overnight. There were a number of packing cases three milk churns and a sad-looking dog in a box with a barred door. The Guard was absent and John sat down in his seat and looked out through the window directly along the sides of the leading carriages. From this position it was possible to see that they were not travelling in a straight line as he had imagined but in a series of beautiful curves, winding along between hills villages and towns, gliding over embankments and slicking through sinuous cuttings. They could not go wrong; the driver had only to watch the signals and keep his hands on the right levers, and provided the signalmen were awake, by twenty to eleven the train would inevitably have reached Victoria Station however many curves and digressions it might have made on the way. Were he in charge of it he would make it go even faster; he wanted to get there; he wanted to see them all; and then, afterwards, if he could, slip away somewhere with Victoria, take her a long way back to school and tell her very nearly everything.

He had hardly slept at all during the night. In his imagination he had travelled the railway to London over and over again; had been through the wedding and the reception twenty or thirty times working out ways of fitting everything into them: Victoria, the family, the talk with David and Prudence, and then Victoria again. And now as the train clicked and swayed on the shining rails, as the tunnels and telegraph-poles flicked past, as the churns rattled and the dog whimpered in its locked box, he dozed contentedly against the red plush cushion and waited for the terminus to arrive.

As soon as they crossed the Thames and began to slow down at the approach to the station, he went back to his carriage, collected his boater and camera, and was first out onto the platform. He found a taxi quite easily, jumped into it, and was swirled swiftly round Buckingham Palace and deposited a few minutes later outside the sooty porch of St Juliana's.

Just as he had imagined it, there was the red-and-white striped awning jutting out over the pavement, the red carpet, and the rows of patent leather limousines. The organ was playing and an usher after looking at his card led him into the nave and down the wide centre aisle.

At first he could not see the family at all; the pews were full of half familiar backs and shoulders, shiny straw hats concealing profiles he only vaguely remembered. At last, however, he recognised Mrs Walton and two of the Walton girls looking as though they had been taken out of a cupboard, dusted and polished and put on show on some proud chimney-piece; and when someone else turned as he passed and flashed him a familiar wink from beneath hair as compact and yellow as brass, his heart hesitated with immediate grievous delight as he recognised Simpson with Lizzie beside him, and next to her, Cissie Booth the housemaid.

But the others! He could not think how they had all come, nor why they had set out. There were people like the Hadleys whom he had only seen once at a Point-to-point, and who always said that everything was ‘bleak'; there was
Fischmann, David's Oxford friend who wrote books about foreign poets, and with him an ex-Grammar-school boy who made a living by selling tinted antique maps to his friends; there was Emma Huggins, Grace Boult and her husband the auctioneer who could talk faster than any grown-up he knew and who had a whole collection of jews' harps in his sitting room in Beddington; while in a sombre little group half way down the aisle there were two moth-bally pews full of more humble parishioners: Lizzie's father whom Mother had forced to sign the pledge, Mrs Mudd with her crow feather hat, Ernie Smelt, and Gladys the girl who always fainted at the Eucharist. It would not have surprised him to see Fish Harry there in his white apron with his basket and spring scale beside him on the seat of the pew. And seeing all these people, so much a part of his own peculiar and individual home life, he began to feel very important and to wish more than ever that he had been looking his best.

Mother must have hired a charabanc to fetch everyone down here all the way from Beddington, and he realised that there was something extraordinarily grand and
Blaydonish
about the mixture of them. If only Father had been a bishop, a gentleman bishop, or better still a lord, then this would have been like one of those
Tatler
weddings where the tenants were given beer outside the stables while their wives curtsied to the Rolls-Royces sweeping past the second lodge.

But still, he thought, it was a pretty good effort and he betted that Victoria was very much impressed. Thinking of her he immediately stopped in the middle of the aisle. The usher beckoned him but he took no notice; and then he saw her; the swift white smile from beside Mother's shoulder, the creamy schoolgirl-hat with the brim flattened against the nape of her neck. He had just time to feel his face spreading delightedly outwards into the flush and expansion of his own answering smile, before he was shown into his pew, the second from the front and immediately behind hers as she sat beside Mother and Father. He himself, he found, was sitting between Michael and Nanny. He squeezed Nanny's nervous hand, leaned over
and kissed Mother, smiled at Father wonderfully tall and parsonic in a morning coat, and then kneeled down on the blue hassock and said his prayers.

She was here, they were all here; the whole of Home, the whole of Northumberland; and she was with them. Wonderful David to have kept his promise and won mother round about Victoria and Mrs Blount. Afterwards, he would thank him; he would even try to like Prudence and hope that she too would be happy even though she was taking him away from them all. For there would never be anyone like David again; Geoffrey was in Canada, farming and going bankrupt, Michael was an owl-face and would probably become a solicitor, whilst Melanie and Mary didn't count, they were just two halves of one person, replicas of one another, both red-haired and as boringly predictable as marmalade cats. He crossed himself and eased himself back on to the pew, edging up as close as possible to Nanny. On her opposite side Melanie leaned over to him.

“Whatever's happened to your face John? You look awful.”

“I don't feel it, I feel wonderful,” he whispered back.

“It's all swollen.”

“I know,” he lied scornfully, “I had eight teeth out yesterday.”

He was longing to attract Victoria's attention but was intimidated by her nearness to Mother; he also wanted to see what was going on up at the altar and make sure that David was there with the best man, Alexander Flood.

Alexander was very aristocratic and drank whisky. He was a school friend of Michael's and John remembered the discussion about his suitability during the Summer Holidays. Mother had said that she didn't want David going out on a lot of ‘daft stag parties' the night before, and Michael had said that he was Lord Remove's nephew and would therefore be bound to meet with the approval of Prudence's side; and this, though it had not stopped her writing warning letters to David, had finally decided her in Alexander's favour.

Suddenly the organ paused and everyone stood up. There was a rustle all the way down from the back of the Church, the organ started to play again and everyone turned round. Prudence with her uncle beside her and followed by twelve bridesmaids, including Mary and the third Walton girl, came slowly down the aisle and passed through the arch of the rood screen to the chancel. The tremors of the organ died away and there was a silence into which the voice of the priest rose indistinctly.

Now that they had all gone beyond the rood screen the remainder of the Church seemed darker even than before. The congregation picked up the cards on which the order of service was printed and waited eagerly for the first hymn. In front of him, John saw Mother tweak Father's sleeve impatiently; Father leaned over her reassuringly and patted her shoulder very quickly and gently as he always did when he suspected that she might be going to be upset. But he had misunderstood her, and lowering her lorgnettes, she looked up at him fiercely and whispered: