In the Time of Greenbloom (48 page)

He stood up; a black bald-headed figure against the drowsing garden. John saw that his hands were quite still, that his pace to the fireplace was measured, and his turn in front of the crested tobacco-jar on the mantelpiece unhurried and precise.

Somewhere in the depths of his mind he had ceased to mourn his lost impetus; somewhere behind the bricking up of the light he knew a clear despair that hung against a back wall whitely; he was scarcely concerned with it.

Mr Victor looked at him with contempt. The shortened upper lip revealed the young dentures, the old eyelids drooped in their shadows and the nostrils dilated on hairy depths.

“This—this gutter-cunning, this adolescent prurience would have been enough”—the narrow torrent of his words filled the room. “For
you
, Bowden, apparently it was not enough; not content with threatening the good name of
this … you add to your tally by running hot foot to the Church and attempting to involve Father Delaura…” Mr Victor's pale yellow hands disappeared from his sides to meet and embrace somewhere behind his buttocks. “Clever of you, Blaydon, remarkably clever!
That
is what has alarmed me … He felt that he might have failed in his function as a priest, but I was able to reassure him. I told him as I had earlier told you that I had recently myself had cause for concern … regretted my haste in having sent you to him without a little further reflection … Doing myself something of an injustice perhaps, because this afternoon I did my best to gain your confidence, to dissuade you from any evil you might even then have been contemplating and to … Made unhappy, Blaydon, to think what must have been the state of your mind after your rejection of me—of my help in the rose-garden four hours ago. It is one thing to commit an offence blindly; it is quite another when what is done is premeditated.”

John sat up. “
Premeditated
:” the word, so fresh in his mind, reached through to him.

“I don't understand,” he said.

Mr Victor took a pace towards him; he seemed to suck himself forward and hover a few feet over the seaweed-brown carpet, pale and bulbous like a giant squid wreathed in its ejected ink.

“You don't know what you're saying; you don't know what you're thinking. It sounds as though you're reading out of a book again and it's making me muddled.”

Mr Victor retreated and John stood up. The change of posture helped him; it was symbolic of the return of his belief in himself. With one of those lightning strokes of insight which illuminate people in their darkest situations he saw that he had inherited from his mother the ability to gain an instant power from the emotion of anger. At such times he was, like her, possessed of a dynamic, an arrogant and intuitive coherence which few people could withstand for long.

Mr Victor he knew, had already sensed the change in
him; the short retreat he had made towards the mantelpiece was in itself conciliatory.

“Sit down Bowden, please sit down.” A hand reached forward and rested on John's shoulder. “Though I may have been a little vehement in my remarks it was only because I was trying to help you to see the truth about yourself. Confusion is a terrible thing; but however painful the process may prove, one must not cling to it when one finds it being dispersed—
destroyed
!”

“No, sir.”

“Then sit down.”

“If you don't mind I'd rather stand.”

Mr Victor frowned, a movement as quick as a lizard's and as wary.

“Very well then,” he sighed. “Let us resume. Perhaps you had better tell me,
confess
to me, if I may put it like that, the
full
extent of your relationship with these girls on the beach.”

“There was no relationship—nothing at all.”

“I fear that I know
something
about young men—more obviously than you give me credit for.”

“Yes sir.”

“In the most exact sense of the word, I have a
rudimentary
knowledge of which I am rather tired. So let us make an end of these lies.”

“They're not lies, sir.”

“But Blaydon! You have already admitted that you lied to Peter—to Probitt; that you lied to the stranger you met on the beach; and that you lied to these
women
.”

John said nothing.

“If you are frightened Bowden, and it is usually fear that makes young men lie, I can assure you that at my hands you have no cause for fear.” He was regaining his own self-confidence. “That is of course unless you continue to lie.”

John muttered.

“It is ugly to mutter, Blaydon! I do not like young men to mutter. Hatred is an unpleasant and destructive emotion
and I am quite aware that at this moment you are filled with hatred for me, are you not?”

They found one another's eyes with horrible ease.

“I am, sir.”

Mr Victor smiled. “We must not digress, pleasant as it may be to do so. I must repeat that if you continue to lie I shall have to take steps to punish you. I cannot afford to have pupils who set their wills against my own; both my livelihood and my reputation depend upon my being the master in my own house.”

He said, “Yes sir.” The moment of his advantage seemed to have side-slipped but he awaited the repetition of it with confidence.

“Very well then! Perhaps you will now admit to me the truth I might have suspected some weeks ago when your visits to the beach, your new-found pleasure in bathing in those unclean waters, first became apparent.”

“I like the sea sir—that's all.” From somewhere he smiled; remembering Anglesey in that last idle Summer following the trip with Greenbloom, the white waves heaving against the washed rocks.

“It is
not
all. You are prevaricating and your guile seems to cause you some amusement. For a moment I thought that my use of the word ‘premeditation' had upset you in some way; I was prepared to be lenient to you. I see now that my first impression was correct. You take a pleasure in your cunning, you enjoy it. I have no more time to spare, Bowden or Blaydon, whichever you prefer to be called, admit your guilt, confess to your lies, assure me of your premeditation and—”

“Don't use that word! Don't use it.” He moved forward and looked through the interval of the air which separated them.

He could feel the blood draining from his face leaving it as paper-white as the newspapers he had read at the time. The man had planned it all in the morning, had returned to have tea with them, even while drinking from her cup in the
cave he had been working out in his mind ways of getting her to himself, of killing her. He had talked and smiled, been friendly with his lips and eyes while behind them he had been thinking of what he might do and how he might do it.

Mr Victor stood his ground. John could still discern his outline and he knew that this time the moment would not be lost to him.

“Go back Blaydon. Sit down. Take your chair.”

“
You
are the liar and you don't even know that you are lying. I told you the truth but you can't hear it. Everything I said was true; if you suggest that I thought of the girls in the way you often think of Probitt,
that
doesn't matter; it doesn't mean anything. I never did more than think of them and I did not encourage the thoughts, and
I
knew what I was thinking. But you don't; you have no idea what you are thinking. You don't know what you are thinking about me and you don't know what you are thinking about Probitt; but
we
do, all of us, from Humphrey to Jones. We are not like Probitt; we are different and if you weren't blind you would be able to see it.”

“You are ill, Blaydon, you are ill.” He stretched out a hand as though to draw a curtain across the french window and then, just as John had forgotten the door, he forgot the window.

“It
was
the Murderer. I saw him: nothing else matters: not what I was thinking nor what you were thinking nor Probitt nor the priest. It is the Truth that matters and you can't hide it. Although I had done nothing except know him like you have known me and Probitt, he frightened me and that is why I ran to my confession. I wanted to find out the Truth before I did anything—”

“The door, Bowden, the door is ajar—a moment.”

John addressed himself to the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. He saw Mr Victor hurry behind him, diminished, smaller than the brown tobacco-jar behind which he passed in his run to the far corner of the study.

“But I shall never go again. Never. The Church was
empty and the priest was empty; only Christ, dead on the Cross, not even bleeding; and King Edward the Seventh, the place where he sat; and then back here to you breathing lies at me, accusing me and frightening me because you are guilty about something yourself. I know what it is and it doesn't really matter—I suppose it's Probitt, something to do with him anyway. But why should I be blamed for what you are thinking and what you have done? I've got enough to be wrong about and so have you. We should help one another, we should—”

“
Bowden
!” Mr Victor shouted at him; his hands caught him round the waist and he swivelled him away from the mirror. John wrenched himself free and stepped backwards into the light streaming in through the french windows.

“Don't touch me! I don't like to be touched by men and I'm not ill. It's just that nobody knows what they are thinking. Father Delaura is lying; he doesn't mean to, but he would never have rung you up if he had been sure of himself; the Murderer is lying, and
you
are lying; that's why you talk so much. If someone found the Truth they wouldn't talk at all; unless they were saints they would be silent; but nobody since the saints has found it and that's why everybody is talking. I shall go to the Police; they'll understand. They are specialists in lying; I'll tell them and they'll believe me because they know which lies to believe.”

He was silent and satisfied; he could look at Mr Victor quite calmly; see him become a face and body again as he stood against the arm of his chair, his pipe shaking slightly in his hand, a fine gleam of sweat on his grey forehead.

“I want you to have a cup of tea with me Bowden—kindly press the bell.”

“Yes sir.”

John moved over to the white china switch with flowers painted on it and pressed the central stud.

“Humphrey is out,” said Mr Victor suddenly sitting down on the hide-covered chair. “Mrs Foley no doubt—”

John sat down on the edge of the chair.

“I see I have done you an injustice, Bowden. There is very much more in all this—I want if I can—”

The door opened and Mrs Foley came in. She was wearing her usual white kitchen coat like a laundress; she gave Mr Victor her sheet-like smile.

“A pot of tea if you please, Mrs Foley.”

“Toast sir?”

“No thank you. Would you like toast Blayd—Bowden?”

“No thank you sir.”

“Just the tea then, Mrs Foley.”

The door closed behind her. Mr Victor got out his handkerchief and passed it swiftly across his forehead.

“It is a little close in here. I wonder if you would mind opening the french windows. The wind appears to have dropped.”

“Thank you Bowden. As I was saying, I want if possible to persuade you to reconsider your decision about going to the Police. Don't think that I am in any way trying to interfere with your conscience, Bowden, or with the course of justice; that is very far from my intention; but I rather hope that when we have examined the facts calmly, you might yourself see that it's quite possible that no good may come of such an action.”

“That would be their affair, sir.”

“Quite! But not entirely;
you
would be involved and so too, though this is not really important, would Rooker's Close.” He smiled slowly, “You see how frank I am being. You have forced me to it; we are none of us, unfortunately, saints and therefore for the time being we have need of the words you so greatly distrust.”

“I exaggerated a little, sir; but at the time I saw it all so clearly—”

“Yes, yes! But let us keep to the matter in hand. I am as I say being frank with you, John. I don't want if it can be avoided—honestly avoided—to have the Blaydon case reopened under these circumstances and at this time.”

“No sir.”

“And I know that you have not lied to me; that is quite certain. I also
know
that you are mistaken—listen to me very carefully, if you please.”

“Yes sir.”

“You are not unwell. But quite obviously you are a highly imaginative boy and something happened this afternoon which unleashed that imagination: a variety of circumstances, a strange moment in time, a complex of events connected with your confession which clouded your judgment. Would you mind telling me exactly what it was which made you so certain that the stranger you met on the beach was in fact the murderer whom you had only previously seen two years ago for the space of half an hour in the darkness of a cave?”

“It was his whistle. He whistled the same tune, the same tune he whistled in the—the same three notes that were whistled—”

“And what was your reaction? What did you do immediately afterwards, more important, what did you
feel
?”

“The wind in the tent. It was green in there, I heard the wind and then it went. I was back in the cave and he was there splashing towards us striking matches. I felt—”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

“I felt as though nothing had ever happened since. I felt like the darkness; quite empty, waiting for something to happen in it. I was what I
had
been, changed back again. I couldn't move at all for a moment; it was very strange, very horrible, like a person dying twice.”

“I think that will do.” He got up and opened the door in response to the knock which John had not heard.