Wilberforce (56 page)

—No, I bloody well am not! I've made
l'amour complet
, and it was the best thing I've ever done.

—
L'amour complet?
Ah. Yes, I was wondering when we'd come to that.

Morgan opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. The leaves had given way beneath him and he was plunging headlong into the pit.

*   *   *

Mrs. Hallows brought a jug, tumblers, and a candle covered with a hurricane glass. Darkness had fallen, leaving the fireflies, the candle, and thin bleedings from the house their only illumination. She went away, and the Bishop set a tumbler before him. Morgan ignored it.

—Whatever you've got to say, Morgan began, I won't tolerate anyone rubbishing her.

The Bishop sipped from his glass.

—She's a lovely girl, and before you say it, she isn't fast or loose or anything else.

Crickets punctuated the darkness. The candle flickered across the Bishop's figure.

—And the other thing you've got to understand is that she consented, more than once. She said she wanted to. She even said when we should so she wouldn't get a baby.

—What went wrong?

—Nothing went wrong.

—I'm sorry, the Bishop said, I was under the impression that shortly afterwards you found yourself in your Headmaster's study forced to give a most awkward explanation.

—That was nothing to do with Polly!

—My mistake.

—We love each other!

—I'm delighted to hear it.

Morgan couldn't see the Bishop's face clearly enough to judge his tone.

—May I ask how she took the news of your departure from St. Stephen's?

—She … I told you it was all terrifically sudden. No one even told me what—

—Yes, forgive me. How do you imagine she will take it when she receives your letter?

—What letter?

—The one you wrote her, naturally.

—I haven't written any letters!

—How very callous.

*   *   *

They sat in silence. Morgan willed his temper to subside. Sweat trickled down his neck. He decided to loosen his tie and let the Bishop be scandalized.

—This girl is in love with you, the Bishop resumed quietly. She trusted you with the most intimate part of herself. She bestowed on you the singular honor of being the first to know her thus, even before her husband, and you disappear without a word to her, not even a sentence on a postcard?

He wanted it to stop. He willed it to stop. He would wake up shortly and find himself …
himself
again, not this creature the Bishop described with voice as mild as cordial. He drew his knees to his chest.

—You must have been discountenanced indeed not to think of it, the Bishop said. It must be painful for you to be separated from her, loving her as you do.

If he could murder the creature with thought alone, he would.

—Morgan?

That name like broken glass under his eyelids.

—Please don't call me …

He could hear the Bishop standing, but he couldn't raise his face.

—It isn't Morgan Wilberforce we speak of?

Knuckles to rainbows against his eyes.

—Has he got a name, this fellow?

If only he did. Droit may have been with him, but he couldn't pin it on Droit. He couldn't pin it on anyone.

—It must be a measure of the crisis this boy was undergoing that it made him forget the girl he loved.

—He's a cad, Morgan said bitterly. He wouldn't know love if it punched him in the face.

—He exaggerated his feelings in the excitement of the act, perhaps? Many a boy has. Sexual congress is strong drink. He may not have the maturity to handle it.

—Obviously not.

—But there's no reason he couldn't write to the young lady now and attempt to make amends for leaving so abruptly.

—It'd take more than an apology, after everything.

—Everything?

The wool of his blazer oppressed him, to look at and to feel.

—It was bad enough how it ended, with that beast Kilby barging in.

A voice not his own thinly narrated: Kilby and the master bursting into the barn, demolishing the atmosphere he'd struggled to establish; how he'd labored to soothe her, to reassure her, to make her see what they'd done as the wonderful thing he knew it was, and just as he'd managed it, in they barged like Roman soldiers, clomping over everything with their hideous boots, dragging them down the hill like criminals—which he no doubt deserved, but not her, never her!—sending her home alone. To think of Polly abandoned—

Something was cutting him from the inside. He punched at his skull until it rang with pain. A dry hand surrounded his wrists, stopping the blows.

—Why was she crying?

The voice softer than the hands, deft enough to slice out his heart.

—Because …

He tugged at his hair until his neck seized:

—Because it wasn't just as they'd planned, not in the instant. It almost was.

She said yes, but then she didn't, and just as he …

—He couldn't stop.

—Couldn't? Or wouldn't?

—Didn't.

Fingernails into wrist. But the dry hands had him, only this time they held with authority.

—Stop that, the voice said.

—I deserve it, and worse!

In his head a single word, silent but breaking his throat:
Help
. The hands fell to his shoulders—
Help
—pulling him out of the ball—
Help!
—forcing him to sit upright.

—I've got you.

Hauled to his feet, dragged stumbling into the thick, dark garden.

—Breathe in and out.

His lungs like pierced balloons. The garden tilted, ground rose up.

—Oh, no, you don't.

An almighty whack across his shoulders, and his lungs filled with air.

—That's better. Come on, in and out.

His lungs obeyed that voice. In and out, out and in, bringing the garden inside him, exchanging things with the minuscule branches of the tree in his chest, inflating him like a bellows, excoriating him back to life.

*   *   *

Those hands guided him through the garden, knowing the way. They removed his jacket, tie, collar, discarded who-knew-where. They compelled his lungs to do their work. The sweat stopped coursing. Pungent things surrounded them, consoling them and insulating them from whatever lurked outside the garden, lying in wait.

Later, the hands made him drink, cool and sweet, flushing the panic from his mouth. They sat on a bench beside the canal. The dark water cooled the air and drew a wind, smelling of earth. It was about to rain. A hand reached out to calm him. He oughtn't to need it, but he didn't draw away.

—Just you concentrate on breathing. I'll do the rest.

What a notion, to cede everything but breath to the hands, all thought, all defense.

—You aren't out of it yet, but hopefully you're far enough from the fire that you can feel the air.

Heavy globs fell on them. The sky flickered.

—I'm standing beside you.

He didn't understand what the Bishop was saying, but it took everything to stop himself collapsing onto the man's knee. The wind swept a curtain of water across the field, across the canal, across them. The hands lifted him again.

—Come on. You might be grateful of a downpour, but if Mrs. Hallows finds me out here, I'll never hear the end of it.

The Bishop led him inside to the red room, where he'd first met the Bishop's daughters. Rain whipped against the windows. Morgan's shirt had splotches across it like wet hives. He shivered.

—Oh, bother, the Bishop said, we've left your things outside.

He peered out the window much in the way of a boy trying to decide if he risked sneaking out.

—Will you be all right if I leave you for a moment?

Morgan felt a wave of fear.

—No, the Bishop said, you're right. Follow me.

It seemed a great effort, but he followed. In the corridor, the Bishop opened a cupboard and extracted a jacket, which he held up to Morgan. Back into the cupboard it went, and after some muttering, the Bishop produced an Aran pullover. Morgan put it on, the cream wool smelling of some piece of Sebastian family history. He turned down the sleeves. The Bishop, having closed the cupboard, looked twice at Morgan and shook his head.

Back in the red room, the Bishop rattled at a cabinet. Morgan stood next to the lamp burning on the table, the room's only illumination. He wanted to stand closer to the Bishop. He felt as if he ought to be wearing dressing gown and slippers, being told to take his fingers out of his mouth.

The Bishop returned to him bearing an old-fashioned glass.

—You've had a shock. Drink that.

Morgan smelled the amber liquid.

—Don't look so scandalized. That's all I'm giving you.

Morgan drank it, fire down his throat, strong and comforting. The Bishop took the glass away as if Morgan had obediently swallowed medicine, then steered him to a chair near the window, miles from the little lamp. The chair had no arms, the kind of thing he imagined a princess sitting in to have her slippers changed. A wing chair, higher, was beside him. The Bishop sat in it. Morgan looked longingly to the lamp across the room.

—Do you think, the Bishop asked, you can manage a bit more?

He didn't think he could manage anything, but the … thing … still waited. He could feel it, in the dimness of the room. More than anything, he did not want the Bishop to send him to bed.

—Before we can close the cover on this, the Bishop said, we really must make an effort, I think, with the route you took to this particular error.

His chest eased. He liked the word
error
. It sounded correctable.

—I assume you've known this girl for some time?

Morgan nodded, but the Bishop had had enough of his mute passivity. Firmly, the Bishop elicited an outline of the Polly episode, how he'd known her since his Fourth Form year but had only that term come to see her in a romantic light.

—Erotic, I think you mean.

His teeth twinged to hear such a word on the Bishop's lips, but he couldn't deny it. Not when their recent acquaintance had occupied itself so heavily with those types of activities.

—Kissing?

—At first.

The Bishop sat back in the wing chair and put his fingertips into his jacket pocket.

—Go on.

—Do you really want me to describe everything?

—I think we've had enough of that with Lord Crim-Con, but am I to assume a wide range of activities more than osculation but less than
vera copula
?

The hardness was returning to the Bishop's voice. Morgan's heart had begun to beat again in his stomach.

—What was that extraordinary phrase you used?
L'amour complet?

A flare, burning everything he had swallowed.

—Where did you hear that? the Bishop asked.

—Nowhere.

Droit had said it, hadn't he?

—It puts quite a gloss on the act.

The Bishop resumed, pulling the story from him as if from nests of carded wool, the delicious intervals in the kitchen of the Keys, and the notion, perfect in its conception, of taking advantage of Patron's Day to plan their tryst, in the green and mossy bower, their dear nook—

—Let us leave Wordsworth out of this, the Bishop said severely. Your persistent impulse to romanticize fornication neither deceives nor impresses me.

—It wasn't wicked, Morgan protested feebly. She enjoyed it just as much as I did.

—And you know this how?

—She made all the maneuvers, most of them anyhow. She laughed. She said it felt lovely.

The Bishop seemed to accept this, but Morgan felt sure he was saving his attack for another moment as he guided Morgan through the rest of the story, their burgeoning romance, his suggestion of
l'amour complet
, her ready agreement.

—You were in love, were you?

—
Yes
, sir.

—She must be a delightful young lady. Polly, you say she's called?

—Yes, sir.

—Polly what?

—Just … Polly. Her father owns the Cross Keys.

The Bishop found each detail more fascinating than the last. Did Polly's mother assist in operating the pub? Morgan thought that … well, actually he had the impression that Polly and her father were on their own. The Bishop evinced sympathy; he could well understand how she and Morgan had consoled one another on this point. Well, actually, the subject had never come up, but just because he didn't possess an accurate family tree for Polly did not mean he loved her any less.

The Bishop did not mean to suggest it. There were many ways to fall in love. Their conversation must have been occupied with other matters, Polly's plans for the future, perhaps? Her taste in music? Reading? Politics? Where had she stood on the Strike, for instance?

They hadn't discussed politics, Morgan informed him, because politics were colossally boring, and everyone knew girls didn't care for them. And before the Bishop continued making his point, Morgan could tell him that he quite got the thrust of it, but Morgan's point was that his affection for Polly was intangible and not caused by casual conversation.

—Very well, the Bishop conceded. I suppose you have sufficient intellectual stimulation at school. The last thing you need is to discuss philosophy with a charming young girl of—remind me how old she is?

He prepared to say something hot in return, but his brain had got disorganized.

—My age.

—She is seventeen?

—More or less.

—Which? More? Or less?

—She may not be seventeen this year, but we're essentially the same age.

—Morgan, the Bishop said, removing his fingers from his pockets, stop equivocating.

—I never asked her directly! It's rude to ask ladies their age. My wretched father was on about this same thing.