Authors: William Golding
“Hullo, Olly! What are you doing in this
ghastly
place?”
“Stroll. Just a stroll. And you?”
“Long weekend. I’m meeting some people.”
“I’ll leave you, then.”
I made to pass, though I did not want to. She stayed in front of me.
“Where you going now?”
“Home. This
awful
shambles!”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“I thought you were meeting some people!”
She put her hand up to her bob.
“It’s the sort of thing one says—”
Then we were silent, constrained, and looking each other over. London had done much for her. It was only an eighth of an inch here, a tailored curve there, a matter of material and cut, I suppose. It was a new kind of gloss; sophistication. She was wearing a severe suit of dark green, and brogues. Her hair was abandoned, yet under control—designed in its abandonment. In one thing, if only one, I was an expert and could read what I saw. Evie had hitched herself up a couple of degrees on our dreadful ladder.
“I was sorry about your father.”
Evie bowed gravely.
“Have you got a car yet, Olly?”
So much for the Sergeant.
“Us? No.” I grinned down at her. “Take a look at me! I’m expensive!”
Evie laughed and exhaled a bit.
“You look so solemn in glasses!”
Deftly she reached forward with both hands and tweaked off my spectacles. The night blurred.
“Hey! Damn it!”
“That’s what I do to my boss when—Now you look like young Olly again.”
“Give ’em back, will you? I can’t—”
“All right. Keep your hair on.”
She came up close, scented and solid, and fixed the supports behind my ears. I caught my dedicated breath as if it had been reminded of something unconnected with the Inert Gases. Evie moved back again.
“Bobby used to take Bounce’s car.”
“Well. I’m not Bobby, am I?”
“No. I see that.”
The paintbrushes flickered. She turned, pacing up towards the Square, and I followed at her shoulder.
“D’you still play the piano, Olly?”
“Now and then. Haven’t much time, you see. D’you still sing?”
“Who? Me? Whatever for?”
We reached the Square. Evie looked at it, then stood facing me.
“What d’you do with yourself, Olly?”
“My dear Evie! I couldn’t possibly explain—”
All the same, I did. I spoke of an idea that had entertained me as if it were already actual. Crypton is inert, they say. But if one teased it sufficiently, a matter of temperature and pressure, a spark gap in a sufficiently dense cloud of
crypton
and another element—One might produce entirely
unnatural
substances, if the word was admissible. Now crypton—
Evie looked up at me, her eyes wide.
“Well, well, well. Old Olly! You
are
clever!”
I was surprised and pleased. Unquestionably London had done a lot for Evie. I had a wild thought of showing her round the labs, but dismissed it, since my status there was not precisely as high as I had suggested. The wildness spread, as I glimpsed our cottage next to the doctor’s house and I even thought of inviting her in. But commonsense immediately reasserted itself.
“Oh I don’t know! As for you, Evie—you’re looking pretty good.”
She exhaled all round us both, in the sodium light.
“Have you got a girl, Olly?”
Smiling, I shook my head, then pressed my cheek where there might be a spot coming. Evie’s reply was astonishing. She nodded solemnly.
“You’re still a bit young for it, aren’t you?”
“I’m older than you are!”
I thought for a moment, feeling the money in my pocket, and decided on the only possible compromise in this situation, since I did not want to lose Evie at once, her exhalation and admiration. While I was thinking, Evie revolved on her heel, searching the Square. She came back to my face.
“There must be
someone
!”
“What d’you mean Evie?”
“Someone alive!”
It was a frivolous remark, I thought, with the fair going on behind us.
“We could go and have a drink—”
Evie opened her purse and examined it; but I reassured her. The money for next term was in my account already. I was wealthy, not yet having discovered the truism that money cannot be spent twice. Together we went towards the Crown. I held the main door open for her and it closed behind us with a soft thump, cutting off the noises of the fair. Here, in the entrance hall, there was no smell of oil and food and sweets and sweat, no flares or pulsing lights; only the respectable smell, faint but all-pervading, of dust and
linoleum
. We went through into the saloon bar, crossed the Axminster carpet and sat ourselves by the bar on the high, varnished stools. Mrs. Miniver was coiled behind her arms and the counter, staring at a dim view of Edinburgh Castle. She uncoiled briefly in a professional welcome, gave Evie her scotch and water and me my pale ale, then coiled up again. I looked round me. The last time I had been in the Crown was with Mr. De Tracy nearly two years before, a notable occasion. Now, four town councillors were armchaired round a low table in the far corner and arranging something about next week’s meeting. A man and woman were sitting in the other corner, saying nothing and watching their drinks glumly.
“Cheers, Olly!”
“Bung ho.”
One of the town councillors limped slowly away to the gentleman’s cloakroom.
Yes, I
did
have a spot coming. I fingered it in a long silence.
The town councillor limped slowly back again. As he passed Mrs. Miniver, he made some grunting remark about the weather. She uncoiled with a bright laugh, then coiled up again.
Evie grabbed her glass and drained it.
“Same again please, Mrs. Miniver!”
“Here, Evie—let me—”
“No.”
The councillor who had limped back, leaned forward in his chair, one hand cupped round his ear.
“Ay? Speak up, Jim!”
“So long as we don’t let the contract go elsewhere!”
“Oh. Ah.”
Evie pressed her hands on her cheeks, shook out her bob, then turned to me.
“We had some good times, didn’t we Olly?”
I laughed automatically. Evie drank some more scotch and water, then spoke with a kind of determination.
“Yes. We did. Good times. And now—coming back—”
I finished my pale ale and looked at Evie’s stocking’d legs. They were all right. I held out my empty glass and Mrs. Miniver filled it. Pale ale was all right.
Evie went on talking.
“People one’s been brought up with—boys and girls—together—”
She exhaled in my direction, at once arch and wistful. I laughed, and took a long drink of pale fire. I remembered things, too, and had a vague feeling that this evening might be led.
“And Robert, Evie! Don’t forget Robert—”
Evie’s wistfulness vanished into archness.
“Bobby! My first sweetheart!”
I drank some more, thought of Miss Dawlish’s two seater and choked.
“Same again, Mrs. Miniver, please!”
“—and me.”
Evie was silent, staring into the mirrors behind the bar. She was all right.
“Tuesday.”
“What d’you mean, Evie?”
“I go back on Tuesday.” She flashed her smile sideways at me. “Hold my breath till then.” She snatched her glass and drained it. “Same again, please!”
“Cheers.”
“Have to look people up, first of course.”
“You? What people?”
A gorgeous idea occurred to me. I grinned at her.
“How’s Freddy Wilmot keeping?”
Evie said nothing for a time, staring into her glass. She drank, and put it down.
“I’ve just come back from Sweden with my boss.”
I put an extra meaning into my grin.
“And what’s
he
like?”
“David’s a dear. Everybody says so. I’m devoted to him.”
She giggled suddenly. Within ten seconds she had changed to something impish, not arch, Evie of the Old Bridge.
“He’s good at everything.
Everything
!”
The tall stool moved under her so that she grabbed the counter.
“Whoops!”
“Cheers—”
“Let’s go and pay your parents a visit.”
“Come off it, Evie!”
“Or Dr. Jones—now there’s a man! We could call on them!”
“I don’t think—”
“No wonder Stilbourne has so many pubs. How else—I wish David was here. ’Nother whisky please!”
“Good at everything.”
Evie gave a loud giggle.
“He’s very good in bed. Everybody says so.”
I was not going to be outdone in sophistication, warmed as I was by my flames of pale fire.
“And is he?”
But I was still nowhere near knowing Evie.
“Yes he is,” she said. “He’s better than you are.”
The grumbling conversation from the corner stopped. There was a hush. I got half off my stool and did a kind of dance by the bar.
“We’ve never been to bed,” I said with a laugh about as natural as a plastic box. “Never! Come off it, Evie!”
“Never been to bed,” she said nodding. “Never out of it after half-past seven. Cheers!”
I raised my own glass, laughing; and made my great
Stilbourne
mistake.
“Bottoms up!”
Evie put down her empty glass very carefully on the counter. She looked into it as if she could see a fly there or something. The glum couple nodded to each other, got up quickly and went away without a word. Evie made a
half-gesture
as if she were about to put back her bob, then dropped her hand again. She looked sideways at me along the bar, looked round the silent room, stared through the walls at the town. The lopsided sneer appeared.
“It all began,” she said, “when you raped me.”
A nightmare singing started in my ears. There was nothing to say—no plain statement that would bear the indisputable imprint of truth. And indeed, what had I done, we done? The four town councillors got up as one man and made for the door, past an uncoiling and coiling up Mrs. Miniver.
“Up at the top of the hill,” said Evie, loudly, and
circumstantially
. “In the clump.”
“I didn’t!”
“Never stood a chance,” said Evie. “I didn’t want you—I was only just fifteen.”
The door of the saloon bar closed. We were alone. I felt the Stilbourne tide again, but this time not whispering and
tittering
. The waters roared clear over my head. I slammed down my glass and flung away, to stand outside in the sodium light by the corner of the Town Hall. Evie appeared at my side, laughing; and with an effort, I kept my hands from her neck.
“Old Olly!”
“You’ve done me, haven’t you? Done me properly, now!”
“That’s right.”
“And you’ve done yourself!”
She giggled.
“What, both of us?”
“And all you can do is laugh and laugh and—”
“Lil’ Audrey. That’s me.”
She swayed forward towards me, exhaling; but the quarter moon and the sodium lights of the square were all that lit her. She was corpselike in complexion, her eyes and mouth black as liquorice. Rage misted my spectacles.
“Oh—go to hell!”
Evie was still for a moment. Then she began nodding solemnly.
“Ah.” She said. “That. Yes. Well—”
She turned away, still nodding, then stopped. She turned back.
“Olly—”
“What?”
“I’m
sorry
!
But—”
“Bit late.”
All at once she became a washerwoman again, face thrust forward, little fists clenched. “
You!
Aren’t you ever going to grow up? This place—You. You an’ your mum and dad. Too good for people aren’t you? You got a bathroom. ‘I’m going to Oxford!’ You don’ know about—Cockroaches an’—Well. Tuesday. Never come back. Not if I can help it. So you can go on telling an’ laughing, see? Telling an’ laughing—”
“What the devil d’you mean?”
“Telling.”
“What about?”
She breathed the words in my face with hate.
“Me ’n’ Dad.”
She turned away and began to walk unsteadily across the Square. She was past Miss Dawlish’s bow window before her feet were under control. I stood, in shame and confusion, seeing for the first time despite my anger a different picture of Evie in her life-long struggle to be clean and sweet. It was as if this object of frustration and desire had suddenly acquired the attributes of a person rather than a thing; as if I might—as if
we
might—have made something, music, perhaps, to take the place of the necessary, the inevitable battle. So strong was this feeling, despite my fury, that I cried out to her in the empty Square.
“Evie!”
She was pacing again; and since the fair made it probable she could not hear me, I was tempted for a moment to follow her, even into the dark jaws of Chandler’s Close. But I saw a light switched on in my father’s cottage and the shadow of my mother pass across the curtain. I also saw—or thought I saw—a flash of the eye from Evie and fingers wiggled over her left shoulder. Then she was gone. I went home
confounded
, to brood on this undiscovered person and her curious slip of the tongue.
A
t the end of my first Oxford term I came back to
Barchester
by train, then took the bus out to Stilbourne. I had hung about in Barchester, scarcely knowing why—mooning round the cathedral close, or browsing in the bookshops, until I saw from the clock that if I did not hurry I should miss the last bus; so I caught it, and hid myself in a book. It was as though by this means I might prolong something. The ‘
something
’ could not be Oxford. Chemistry had engulfed music, and was regarded, I found to my surprise and indignation, as a full-time job. It left me little leisure for the indulgence of my private vice of music, though interesting enough in itself. Moreover I was eager to see my parents, exhibit the
fashionable
width of my grey trouser legs and tell them all about everything. Evie was gone, Imogen married; and I was a proper student with a proper sense of values and duty and therefore no worries.
All the same, I concentrated on my book.
After the old landfall
Comes the new windfall
Length without breadth
Position without magnitude
Prayer without tears.
It was no use, I couldn’t understand him however good he was. I was a scientist with one private vice. I was expecting too much if I thought myself clever enough for two. I put the book away and braced myself for whatever it was, until in the darkness the bus heaved itself with a cowlike sway over the Old Bridge. I carried my two suitcases from the bus stop to our cottage and found it in darkness. While I was groping for the key under the mat I heard my mother’s voice coming through the Square from the Town Hall. She embraced me with great affection and enthusiasm; and before we were properly settled indoors I understood what was up, for my father was carrying his violin in its black, wooden case. I, as it were, stepped right back into a piece of understanding as by nature, for when my father switched on the light I saw that my mother was wearing her best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. She was laughing and glittering and excited. I did not need my father’s violin, nor his dark grey suit to tell me that Stilbourne Operatic Society had achieved its biennial or triennial
resurrection
. I believe it was always a time when my mother came to some quite extraordinary level of life. She had cornered the piano; and with the bandmaster from the college OTC on the trombone, the incumbent of Bumstead Episcopi with his double bass, a type-setter on the viola and my father as first and only violin, she controlled a theatre orchestra. The tenuity of this orchestra was not explicable only in terms of talent or its lack. If we had had more people who could play instruments we should have had no room for them. The same inadequacy limited the size of cast and chorus; so that
The
Country
Girl,
Merry
England,
Lilac
Time,
and
Chu
Chin
Chow
operated in very reduced circumstances. But even if we had had a mass of talent and a vast stage, orchestra pit and
auditorium
, there would still have been an overriding limitation, the social one. No one of the college’s closed society was available; and Sergeant Major O’Donovan helped us only because he was right on the fringe of it. Then again, at least half of Stilbourne’s population was ineligible, since it lived in places like Chandler’s Close and Miller’s Lane, and was ragged. Though Evie sang and was maddeningly attractive, she would never have been invited to appear, not even as a member of the chorus. Art is a meeting point; but you can go too far. So the whole thing had to rise from a handful of people round whom an invisible line was drawn. Nobody mentioned the line, but everybody knew it was there.
The SOS rose from a vein that wandered through society beneath the surface. We had no ritual except mayoral
processions
. We had no eloquence, no display. We were our own tragedy and did not know we needed catharsis. We got our shocked purging from
The
News
of
the
World.
Yet every now and then, the vein became inflamed by pressure and we stirred uneasily in our sleep. The SOS, laid to rest after the last performance, would wake and lick its wounds. There were many; for after a performance, few of the cast would speak to each other again. With diabolical inevitability, the very desires to act and be
passionate
, to show off and impress, brought to full flower the jealousies and hatreds, meannesses and indignations we were forced to conceal in ordinary life. Casting a light opera removed half our potential at a stroke, since there were always three or four people who thought themselves so insulted by failure to get the hero or heroine’s part, that they withdrew their services; or worse still, sulkily accepted minor roles and embarked on a career of theatrical sabotage. By the end of our three nights’ run, the other half of the cast would have been so mortally affronted they would vow never to subject themselves to such humiliations again. It was for this reason that the SOS did not perform annually. A certain period was necessary for scar tissue to form. The strife would die down, enemies return to a nodding acquaintance; and then, just too late for the next year’s performance, the vein would begin to ache again. A committee would assemble, revive the society, inspect the damage done last time; then announce that the SOS, in aid of some charity, Dr. Barnardo’s perhaps, would present such and such a musical in the Town Hall. Directly I saw the pink flush on my mother’s cheeks I knew that I should not have to say anything about Oxford. My mother was exalted and would do the talking.
“What is it this time, then, Mother?”
“We’ll have some tea, I think,” she said. “Put the kettle on will you, Father? My goodness, I’m quite—It’s very good, you know Oliver. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything as good!”
She hummed a bit, then laughed.
“What’s it called I mean?”
“The
King
of
Hearts.
Some of the music is very pretty. You’ll like it.”
“I’m not going. No fear.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “D’you know dear? This time we’ve got a professional producer. Have you heard about him at Oxford? Mr. De Tracy. Mr. Evelyn De Tracy. I’m sure you’ve heard of him!”
“Well I haven’t.”
“He’s a
charming
man! He’s taken all difficulties in his stride. You’d think a professional—”
“Difficulties?”
“The Mayor’s Parlour, I mean. Mr. De Tracy just said ‘Well boys and girls, we shall simply have to do a little
rerouting
.’ That’s all. Just that. Father, you’ve forgotten the strainer!”
“What about the Mayor’s Parlour?”
“Would you believe it! He said ‘No.’ And ever since, it’s been locked.”
“But surely you can’t—”
“Mr. De Tracy hung the cyclorama eighteen inches further out and arranged for the cast to go that way.”
“But
why
?”
“You may well ask. Here you are, dear. Father, I believe you took the kettle to the pot! You see, Oliver. It’s his daughter.
Her
nose was out of joint I can tell you—”
“She’s
not—
”
“She is!”
“No!”
“I’m telling you, Oliver. So you see.”
I saw indeed. The Mayor’s daughter, Mrs. Underhill, was a fixture. Many years before, she had appeared for a season on the professional stage and had a trained voice. Ever since, she had been our permanent
ingénue
,
which simplified things. I had seen her in Persian trousers, Chinese trousers, Elizabethan skirts. Her voice could fill Drury Lane and made our tiny Town Hall seem no more than a boot box. Indeed, coming down from the woods towards Stilbourne I had once heard a high C of hers and had thought it was a patient in the nearby hospital. If Mrs. Underhill had been ignored by the committee, it was logical that her ancient father should refuse the use of his parlour; natural too that he should delay the announcement until it inflicted the maximum damage.
“How d’you manage?”
“The stairs at the back, of course. They tell me it’s an awful squeeze. Back stage left,” said my mother, proudly relishing the technicality. “Just the one entrance. Anyone coming on stage right goes along behind the cyclorama. You can see it quiver a bit sometimes.”
“More than sometimes,” said my father. “Young Johnson nearly put his elbow through it, tonight.”
“But how—I mean—”
My mother understood.
“Well. She
is
nearer sixty than fifty, dear, and all good things come to an end, don’t they? It’s time she stepped down and gave way to a younger person,”
“What part is she playing then? A witch or something?”
“You don’t suppose Elsie Underhill is going to play
anything
but the lead, do you? My dear Oliver! She withdrew from the production. It’s been a thing, I can tell you. Some people say that Claymore didn’t handle it the right way—”
“Claymore? He’s still the lead then—”
Norman Claymore, owner and editor of the
Stilbourne
Advertiser
;
and now the husband of Imogen. My heart lurched, as I understood who was the ingenue displacing Mrs. Underhill.
“They make a very pretty pair, dear, even if Mr.
Claymore’s
voice is a little on the light side—”
“He sounds like a gnat.”
“And I suppose one must admit that he really doesn’t look much like Ivor. But Mrs. Claymore—Imogen Grantley that was—now
she
really looks like a princess!”
I could believe it; and tried mentally to retire to Oxford again.
“Her voice,” said my father, “is—”
“
Now
,
Father! Have another cup.”
I knew that Imogen sang. It was perfection heaped on perfection and I made a mental note to go for a very long walk next day, lest I should hear her and be hooked again.
“I bet it’s a jam on those stairs!”
“Well of course, in the orchestra we don’t get to know much about the circumstances back there. You’ll be able to tell us, dear.”
I nodded absently, still thinking about Imogen. Then—
“
What
did you say, Mother? Me? Stairs?”
“It’s very near the beginning, dear. There’s a scene—”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
“You haven’t heard what I’m going to say, have you?”
“Look—”
There’s a scene; I think it’s in Hungary or Ruritania or somewhere. It’s a restaurant, you see.
She
doesn’t know he’s the king in disguise and
he
doesn’t know she’s the princess of Paphlagonia in disguise. It’s very clever as an idea. I don’t know how he thinks of it!”
“I’m not. No. I warn you, Mother—”
“And of course a gipsy plays to them and it’s then they fall in love—”
“No!”
I noticed that my father would not look at either of us but was inspecting his cup as if he were reading his fortune in it.
“Just imagine,” said my mother. “
He
plays and they have this most
moving
conversation and after the king’s given him a purse of gold he goes out; and very softly the orchestra takes up what the gipsy played and he—the king I mean—starts to sing at the table close to her”—and my excited mother began to sing, with immense passion—“‘Morning is dawning, dear child, in my heart—’”
“I won’t!”
“Now, Oliver,” said my mother, her passion calming, “don’t be trying. We’ve had young Smith as a gipsy with silk strings and father playing for him but he’s no good. He simply can’t move his bow in time with the music. So I promised Mr. De Tracy. For the last performance tomorrow, I said, my son Oliver will be glad to play—”
I grabbed desperately at a straw.
“Look, Mother! I don’t play the wretched instrument nowadays! And I couldn’t learn anything for tomorrow if I tried.”
“You don’t have to, dear.”
“What does this gipsy do then? Carry a music stand and Augener’s Edition round with him?”
“It’s that music you were playing before you went up to Oxford,” said my mother. “You remember how much you liked it, dear, because you played it
all
day and
every
day for three weeks! I thought you played it very nicely.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I looked accusingly at my father but he was still inspecting his cup. I looked accusingly at my mother; but she was placid again, smiling and
triumphant
.
*
On Saturday morning, next day, I went resignedly with my mother to the Town Hall. We entered from the big doors at the west end, and three people were waiting for us. Mr. Claymore and Imogen were seated at a small table on the stage. I was mercifully saved from an official introduction because when I followed my mother who was walking busily up the hall, the latch of my violin case came undone and I spilt the lot on the floor. Retrieving this took me all my time, so that I was standing, bow in one hand and violin in the other, before anyone paid any attention to me. I looked at Imogen and she gave me her wonderful crinkly smile but said nothing because Mr. Claymore was talking, with his voice that sounded always to me like a finger nail scratching frosted glass.
“He’s here, Evelyn. We shan’t need to do more than run through just that bit of dialogue, shall we?”
I thought hazily at first that this itself must be part of the play because the figure that emerged from the wings on my left was in costume.
“Mr. De Tracy,” said my mother. “This is my son, Oliver, Oliver, dear, this is Mr. Evelyn De Tracy.”
Mr. De Tracy bowed very low but did not say anything. He simply smiled down at me from the stage and waited. He was very tall and thin. He wore check trousers without cuffs and a jacket so longskirted it came almost to the knee. He also wore a wing collar and a black stock above an
embroidered
waistcoat. I wondered what such a figure was doing in Hungary or Ruritania. It was good of him to act as well as produce.