The Young Desire It (7 page)

‘Keep them. I don't want them,' Waters mumbled kindly, and went on peering at his book. Penworth moved uneasily about, lit a full pipe, and leapt upstairs again with pretentious alacrity. Mr. Jolly, tall, lean and greyer than the shadows, with his nose pointing down like a jester's finger, waited for him above.

‘Nice crowd, Penworth. Fiends. Horrors. Like a whisky?'

They went into the Housemaster's room, which was of the same size as his own, with the furniture placed, of necessity, in the same way. But on the shadowy table a reading lamp shaded with a green shade cast its cool light demurely downwards. In that light the tumblers, the decanter, the frosted soda-siphon looked all more attractive and living than Waters' plain fare. Penworth thought, I must have a reading lamp.

‘There's a fellow here the Chief suggested me looking after,' he said cheerfully. ‘Chap named Fox. Do you happen to have seen him, sir?'

Mr. Jolly growled at the tilted decanter. ‘Yes. Yes. H'm. Nice little lad. Not so fiendish as most of them seem to be. Damn them. Yes. Fox. A little coward of a fellow, but very friendly. Pretty-faced, you know. That may be why…We shall need to keep an eye on him; that sort can get mucked up fairly easily, in my experience.'

His bold eyes, that never betrayed the thoughts behind them, moved from the glass in his hand to the pale, sensuous face of the young man, and rested there steadily. They drank their drinks. The cold soda buzzed in Penworth's throat. Mr. Jolly, humming and growling, raped his dim bookshelves with one majestic glance and remarked that, as it was the first night of renewed purgatory, they had better drink again.

‘How do you think the Chief looks?' he asked abruptly.

‘Well…he might have had a bit more rest,' Penworth suggested, as though it were a question.

‘The best Headmaster in this country, my friend. The best—not a doubt of it.'

This reminded Penworth of those times when he and Waters and the rest of the younger men had discussed the possibility of Mr. Jolly's appointment as the next Chief. He considered his senior's exclamation of faith, understanding well that something more than simple charity had made it empty of any tone of hopeful expectation. There was sympathy and superb pity in Mr. Jolly's voice as he spoke.

‘The best. And you are right, old man—he needs a rest. Did you notice him at supper to-night? Worn out already. Damnable. And the confounded Board…Well, I wonder whom we shall have next, that's all. I mean to advise him to retire as soon as he feels he may.'

‘I can't imagine him doing that,' Penworth said thoughtfully. ‘It means too much to him, being Head in this particular School, seeing every day how much he's done for it, and what he hopes to do.'

‘Ah yes. He may never feel justified. He may not. But I would'—Mr. Jolly leaned down suddenly and almost took a volume from the massy shelves. ‘I would, I can tell you. God knows…I may even be able to, one day. I hope so. This is no life, my friend.'

‘Why,' Penworth said with some embarrassment, ‘you might be Head yourself. No one is more suited…'

‘I!' Mr. Jolly said fiercely, and the rakish lock of hair dashed itself across his left eye against the protuberance of his nose. ‘Why, my dear old chap, I'd no more take on that job than I'd—than I'd burn those books.' His eyes bulged, turned to the books, and softened passionately. ‘No. Not I.' He growled a laugh. ‘Don't you young bloods go getting ideas of that sort.'

Penworth walked down the aisle between the stark white beds. Laughter, cries, murmurs of familiar talk filled the dormitory. They were getting ready to go to bed. He felt restless. From the bathrooms came a sound of stamping feet bare on the concrete, and muffled echoes of some sort of horseplay. He walked slowly back, through the double doors, past the stair-head to the bathroom doors, which were closed. Some one was being put through the inevitable ordeal of going into the big linen basket that should stand by the entrance to the water-closets. When this basket was half-full of stinking socks and soiled linen, it was considered an ordeal of the higher senses for the initiate; when, as now, it was empty, all who went into it came out sore and bruised about the face and elbows and knees, from hard contact with the stiff cane sides. Penworth could hear the heavy breathing and difficult laughter of the boys who were bouncing and trundling it about on the concrete floors.

‘Here, you young monkeys,' he called, and opened the doors. ‘Back to your dormitories. Jameson! Drake! You—what's your name—Stand that basket up, will you? All of you. Take that lid off and get out.'

Abashed, but not frightened—for it was, after all, the first night of term, an angry gala night—they straightened their backs and tried to compose their expressions to suit this expected intrusion. The shine of their eyes and lips, as they withdrew themselves from their high enterprise, was animal, provocative, brutally attractive to Penworth. He hardened himself against it, and stared coldly.

‘Out you go, all of you,' he said tersely; and they went out, to loiter about the door, watchful and loth to lose any moment of sensual excitement. Their hot bodies were tense in the half-light. Over the top of the basket a boy's red, terrified face turned dully from them to the Junior Housemaster's pale, sardonic mask.

‘What are you doing there?' Penworth demanded automatically. ‘What's your name?'

‘Charles Fox, sir.'

‘Oh.' He stared. ‘Well, come on—get out of that basket. Go back to your dormitory. This sort of thing isn't allowed, you know.'

‘It's not my fault,' Charles said loudly, fighting back a strong urge to scream and tear the flesh of faces with his hands. ‘It's not my fault at all. Why do you blame me? It's not my fault.'

This surprised Penworth greatly, both the reckless passion of the boy's eyes, and his own sudden nervousness. He was used to a deference which, even if it was only superficially respectful, at least seemed more than skin-deep. Subdued laughter hovered about the doorway behind him. He swung round, whisky-fierce, with the haughtiness of embarrassment.

‘Get away from that door, and shut it.'

They went away, grumbling and laughing. His hot stomach seized on the laughter's insolence, and in a fine temper he turned upon Charles.

‘Look here, young man. One of the first principles of this School is politeness to your masters…'

Charles, shaking his head from side to side, trembling and stammering, saw the world as a nightmare that whirled a little, swayed and surrounded him.

‘It's not my fault, I tell you. It's not. It's not.'

There was no insolence in this defiance, anyhow, and Penworth, becoming a little calmer, understood.

‘Come on. Get out of that basket,' he said gently.

Charles's face went white; then blood reddened it; then it paled again. He stopped shaking his head.

‘I…I can't. Sir…I can't, sir.'

‘Come on,' Penworth said, roughly hiding his changed embarrassment. He took the basket by its thick handles, and lowered it fairly gently to the floor.

‘Oh,' Charles said.

He sprawled out of it, white and naked upon the concrete. Penworth stepped back not understanding his sudden agitation. To Charles, whose body was hot, marked by the hard cane of the basket, the floor felt awkwardly cool. He put himself upon his feet, still flushing and paling by turns. Until this night, since he was a very small child he had never stood naked before anyone's eyes. And certainly Penworth's eyes were on him. Certainly they were. He tried to hide his nakedness. At length he turned his back. Penworth looked at it, and felt some strange sensation of pleasure and shame course through him, dissipating all that was left of his censure, as heatless early sunlight dissipates frost on the grass.

He laughed shortly.

‘Where are your clothes?'

‘They took them away. They've got them, sir.'

Penworth strode to the door. The boys, of course, were still there, silent, listening, with curious smiles of pleasant anticipation. He scowled.

‘You young fools. I thought you'd have had more sense. You've frightened the wits out of the boy. Haven't you any sensitiveness yourselves? Think—and do things more carefully. If you must do them. Where are Fox's clothes? Who has them?'

They saw that he had suddenly become very angry. Anyone who affronted that sort of mood in him would, as most of them knew, be fiercely punished. The pyjama suit was put into his hands, and they went away. Only in their dormitories, where they urgently told the story, did they venture again to laugh.

‘Don't go into the bathrooms. Penworth's there, and he's mad.'

‘Jesus, he's mad.'

‘With that new kid.'

‘Fox, the sissy.'

‘He's not mad with Fox. Mad with us.'

‘Jesus, he's mad.'

They knew it was Fox's fault.

Penworth gave Charles the pyjama suit. The boy's white skin had faint red marks upon it, round the shoulders, burning and fading. He put one hand on it, very briefly. It was as fine and as soft as a girl's skin.

‘Put 'em on,' he said. ‘And go along to bed. Don't you worry. You'll be all right.'

His kind, quiet tone gave Charles another shock. He began to cry, and Penworth, who became filled with a mild sentimental grief when he heard it, pretended not to notice. He picked up a towel that lay knotted in a corner. The knots were huge and thick, and loosened easily enough.

‘This will be your towel,' he said at last, holding it at arm's length. ‘Wash that dirty face and go along to bed.'

Then he went out hurriedly, leaving the doors wide.

In Dormitory B the House captain, who presided also over that dormitory, was still sitting on his bed talking. Neatly folded clothes, books, and a scatter of other possessions, lay about on the white coverlet. He was a short, fair young man, popular as Fairfax was popular; but he was no scholar, and he suspected scholarship.

When Penworth came along to him he sat looking up at his Junior Housemaster with calm indifference. His eyes were blue and piercing, with a catlike quality of remote concentration pointing their undisturbed stare.

‘Just keep your eye on that young chap Fox for a time, will you, Bourke?' Penworth said at once. ‘I don't mean coddle him. But see that he doesn't get too rough a time.'

‘Very well, sir,' Bourke said shortly.

‘You see,' Penworth went on, with a certain craft, knowing where the House captain's heart was affected, ‘it doesn't do the House any good if it has some one in it liable to behave badly. That lad is completely strange to this sort of life. We'll have to do things gently; teach him how to be a credit to the House.'

He relaxed a little, feeling more sure of himself as calmness returned with the deliberate exercise of his mind. He was thinking rapidly.

‘You see,' he said with a smile, ‘it's up to you older chaps to see that there's no nonsense in the House. Most of you know more about the younger boys, as human beings, than the Masters do. That lad Fox will have to learn to be a good sport, like everyone else. But…you see what I mean?'

‘Yes sir. I see.'

Bourke's eyes looked with more tolerance after him when he had turned and was walking away, sneering at himself for having talked such horrid nonsense. He hoped he had chosen the best way to make things easier for the boy, even if his own integrity, as he saw it, was affected.

Charles came in from the bathrooms feeling that it mattered little and made little difference where he was, what he did. He made a pretence of busying himself, and tried to set his locker in order. Article after article, as he touched it, and looked at it, reminded him so sharply of home and that former life that he was inwardly tortured beyond belief, and eventually the noise and light and movement about him became unreal. The unfriendly stares and low-spoken remarks of some of the boys he faced with the blind defiance of complete grief. Nothing mattered—neither where he was nor what was done to his body. The very worst that could happen had happened already, he knew.

Penworth did not leave Dormitory B until the lights were put out. He walked up and down, aloof, condescending, amiable, his sensual full lips moving softly as he smiled or spoke. Beneath their wide arched brows his beautifully-set eyes appeared now to observe all things with disinterested tolerance. At Charles he did not once look, and Charles at length ceased to expect that. The lights were put out. Penworth still walked through the dormitory quietly, like a darker shadow upon the darkness.

When he went out for the last time, noise welled up freely again, and the remainder of the evening's entertainment was begun. Long after it had been stopped by Bourke and the other prefect, Charles lay awake. In the village, half a mile away, a church clock told the hours as the hot night dragged on. At last, in the peace of imagining himself at home again, with all this as a mad dream, he was asleep.

Looking back on his own first days and earlier weeks in the School, Mawley, who knew him better than anyone at that time, saw more and more clearly what the experience must have been, as recorded by Charles's too-sensitive consciousness. There were few things against Mawley. Superior schoolboy cousins had coached him to be ordinary; and, having attended schools before, happily enough, he was no doubt ordinary, secretive, full of deceits and self-deceits already. In spite of this Mawley's was not an easy initiation. Therefore it was possible to perceive, afterwards, something of the desperation with which, in an instinctive awareness of imminent but still unrevealed decisions, Charles at that time faced what he thought was life.

Among the mass of boys there, he was in fact like a person from some remote land that had been civilized without sophistication. He was a visitor from the very real country of childhood, and from that innocent demesne in it which all others of his age there had left, long ago. His innocence was only ignorance in that he had never been schooled to guard against and suspect his fellows; and that was only because he had been unfortunate enough not to have to do with other human beings, other than his mother.