I'll Never Be Young Again (9 page)

‘I saw clearer there.’

‘I can’t understand that. I’d have gone mad. I’d have wanted to bash somebody’s head in.’

‘That had been done already.’

‘Oh! hell, Jake - you know what I mean. I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

He smiled at me across the fire and I knew I had not hurt him. I wanted him to go on talking. ‘Tell me about that chap,’ I said.

‘There isn’t much,’ said Jake, ‘that I can make into a story for you. He was all right, just like a million other fellows, that’s all. I made the mistake of believing he was different.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘We were on a ranch together for a while - there’s another thing I’ve done, Dick, besides sailing and boxing and being in prison!’

‘Was it fun?’

‘Sure, it was grand. We used to like it.’

He laughed, and I felt I should never really understand how he could have killed this man who had been his friend.

‘We used to talk ourselves sick in those days,’ said Jake; ‘we had ideas on everything. He was an enthusiast all right.We thought of going to a leper colony at one time.’

‘Hell.’

‘I know - youthful, wasn’t it? That’s the sort of chap he was. I loved watching him with the cattle; he knew instinctively how to handle one of them when it got sick. He knew what to do. He was fond of horses too. He’d have liked this trip.’

There was something terrible in the way Jake talked about the man he had murdered. It seemed impossible and unreal. He did not appear to mind. It was as though the years of suffering in prison had done away with feeling.

‘I don’t know how you could have done it,’ I said.

‘Done what? Oh! killed him, you mean. No - I ought to have hanged for it, of course.’

‘Jake - don’t.’

‘You think this is all very cold-blooded, don’t you? You see, it happened so long ago.’

‘Seven years?’ I said.

‘It doesn’t sound much to you, but then you see, you’ve never been in prison.’

‘Jake . . .’

‘You have time to worry everything out then.’

‘Go on telling me,’ I said.

‘We went to England after a while,’ he said. ‘I took up boxing, I hung around with a moving fair. I enjoyed all that. I didn’t see much of him, though; he was in London. I felt he’d be doing something great, wherever he was.We’d never quite given up the thought of the leper scheme, and I was ready to break away whenever he was. I wrote to him after a while, asking him how things were. Got a funny letter back. Said now he was in London life and people had made him feel different. He laughed at the leper business, said I must have been crazy to think he’d meant it seriously. He was going about a lot. Somebody must have lent him the money; he was always broke.’

Jake smiled as he said this. He leant back, his head against his hands. I saw the firelight reflected on his face.

‘What did you feel about it?’ I said.

‘Oh! I didn’t think much. In a way I imagined the whole letter was a joke. Then I heard about the girl.’

‘Who told you?’

‘A fellow I’d known in America came to see me fight one day. He was amused at this circus life I was leading.We got talking about things, vaguely, you know. He was quite a nice chap, but spoilt himself by drinking and running after women who didn’t want him. He suddenly showed me a letter from some girl - written out in Switzerland. Terrible letter it was. She’d got consumption, and everything was hopeless. And this little fellow, who wasn’t anything much himself, mark you, got white in the face and said to me - I remember the exact words - “I knew that girl when she was hardly more than a kid - and now she’s dying, all because of some swine like you or me.” He told me she’d led a hell of a life for about two years. He seemed to have all the details. It was an unattractive story.’

I wanted to know everything though.

‘Go on,’ I said to Jake.

‘I listened - much as you’re listening now, Dick, but it wasn’t from curiosity, it was something more. I hated the thought of this world that must be lived in - the sordid pitiful lives of men and women, who can’t get beyond their own bodies. I could see this girl, living as she did without the excuse of poverty - she wasn’t any prostitute having to keep herself, but spoiling her beauty, her health, and her own precious individuality, which is greater than anything in life, Dick, because some man had taught her to be self-indulgent. There wasn’t anything more in it than that.’

‘But look here, Jake, damn it - life, I mean . . .’

‘Oh! I know. The same thing happens every day and night. But there didn’t seem to me to be any need for a girl to die out in Switzerland because of it. Animals are wiser. Making love is a physical necessity to them, and they have young.’

‘Yes - but, Jake . . .’

‘That’s the way I looked at it, Dick, sitting over a drink with this fellow. He said: “I’d like to wring the necks of all the men who’ve had her,” and I couldn’t help smiling to myself, for, thought I, there speaks the one man who hasn’t. At the same time I didn’t agree with him. It went further back than that. “They don’t matter at all,” I said, “the man to kill is the first - the rest don’t count.”

‘“You know who he was?” he said. How should I? I shook my head. “Why,” he said, “your pal out on that ranch, I forgot his name. Saw him the other day in town.That’s the whole point of my telling you this story - I thought you knew who I was talking about?”

‘“No,” I said.

‘“Oh! well, I suppose I’ve been rather indiscreet.” He looked very taken aback. I thought he was a fool, blabbing over two whisky and sodas.

‘“Are you speaking the truth?” I asked.

‘“Why - I can give you details,” he said. I did not want them though. I got up and walked away. He thought I was crazy. My ideas had all gone smash in a second.

‘Because I was young and it wasn’t my business, I wrote to him. He came down the next day. I remember standing up, very proud and serious, and telling him the story I had heard. And I remember him throwing back his head and roaring with laughter.

‘“Good Lord, Jake,” he said, “if you expect me to feel responsible for every woman I’ve slept with . . .”

‘I hated him then. I hated the way he didn’t even bother to finish his sentence, and I hated his laugh. But most of all I hated him for having destroyed my idea of him. That’s being young, Dick, and that’s why I killed him.’

I nodded, for this much I understood, and it seemed to me that I was living far more in this story than was Jake, the teller of it, for he leant back with his head against his hands and the firelight on his face, the sound of his voice calm and detached, as though he were reading some impersonal tale from a book; while I leant forward, my chin in my hands, and I didn’t see the fire or the trees of the forest around me, but only the figure of the old Jake standing with his hands clenched in the hot circus tent, with all his illusions crashing about his ears, and before him the laughing face of his friend, who, in a terrible subconscious fashion I could only identify as myself. I had never known this man whom Jake had killed, and yet I knew it was myself and that it was my story.

‘When he had finished laughing,’ said Jake, ‘he came over to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. “You take life too seriously, Jake,” he said. “You’re like the leader of a lost cause. Smile, boy, smile. I want to see you fight.” Then I went into the ring, and he watched me, applauding, looking so like his old self of the ranch that it seemed hard to believe the truth of everything that had happened.

‘I looked down from my corner on the faces of the men gathered at the ringside, and there he was, smiling at me, winking because of the fun of it all.

‘“I’ll pay my two bobs’ worth and have a knock at you myself, Jake,” he said.

‘“Come on,” I said. People were laughing all around; they knew we were friends, and it would be a rag.

‘“Smash up your pal,” somebody shouted, and outside the tent I could hear the thumping of the drum and the yell of the chap who worked the crowd to come inside.

‘“Walk up - walk up - and see the greatest fight of your life. Champion Jake against an unknown Amatoor.”

‘I waited for him in my corner. We were about the same size. Often we had knocked each other about out on the ranch. He didn’t look good stripped; I noticed he’d put on flesh, and he’d gone flabby. He wouldn’t be quick on his feet, I thought.

‘“This is going to be a hell of a rag,” he called to me; “I’ll lay you out on the floor inside ten minutes.”

‘The crowd gaped at us, grinning. The shabby little referee lifted his hand excitedly, and held out his watch, calling time. I worked round to the centre of the ring, while my opponent shuffled on his feet towards me.

‘The first blow came from him, he feinted with his left and then swung under my guard and landed on my ribs with his right. I shook him off, and then followed him up closely with a short right and left on the mark. He tried a left hook to my jaw, but I dodged, and got in a stab from my right above his heart. This shook him a little, and he came at me with a rush. He was smiling, as he had often smiled when we had sparred together on the ranch, and I heard him say - “Come on - Jake.” I knew then that I should kill him. Something inside me was bleeding because of him, and I was young, and I’d never been hurt before. I thought more of my own lost faith than of the girl, dying out in Switzerland. Then I remembered the leper colony, and the way he had talked on the ranch with his face uplifted like a priest who dies for his belief. I remembered his hands, and a sick animal in pain, watching him with wounded eyes, trusting him. I felt as though I possessed all the strength of the world at that moment. He rushed at me then, shaken by the blow above his heart as I have said, and his guard was careless, for he was swinging to attack. I saw his smile and the point of his jaw, and then I smiled too, and I struck him - just below his jaw - I saw his head fall back horribly, and his hands spreading - clutching at the air, and then he crashed down on to the floor to lie limp and helpless, with his neck broken, and the veins standing out strangely in his throat.

‘He died there at my feet.

‘Then I remember somebody shouting and people climbing up through the ropes on to the ring, and the thin hysterical voice of someone screaming in my ear, pulling at my shoulder with their hands . . .’

Jake broke off, and I saw his eyes staring at me over the light of the fire, and they were black and burning against the pallor of his face.

‘Why - what’s wrong, Dick?’ he said.

When he spoke to me the picture of the ringside vanished, and the hot air was gone, and his eyes were no longer the eyes of the murderer bearing down upon me, his friend, but the grave gentle eyes of the Jake I knew, and there was not any hatred after all, and there was no death from which I could not escape, but only the firelight and the pale branches of the trees, and he and I talking together of something that had happened long ago.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s all right - it doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Why,’ he said, ‘you look like a pale ghost, scared in the dim light. You’re white and drawn, and your eyes are black like two hollows in your face.’

I shivered for no reason.

‘You’re drawing a picture of yourself,’ I said. He shook his head at me. ‘You don’t have to be scared,’ he said.

‘I’m not scared,’ I told him, ‘I’m only glad that all this here is real, and that your story is over and done with. It can’t happen again.’

‘No, never again.’

‘Being in prison hasn’t made you hard, Jake. I can imagine what you were before, but you’re bigger now in every way.’

‘No - I only see straight.’

‘I shan’t ever be able to do that.’

‘Yes, you will.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘After you’ve suffered a while.’

‘I did, as a boy, in my own way.’

‘That’s different.’

‘It would take me wrong, Jake. I’d crumple up over anything.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. At first, perhaps, not afterwards.’

‘It would be all right if you were around.’

‘You can’t depend on that.’

‘You said I could always depend on you,’ I said.

‘I meant, you mustn’t give way to the idea of your own weakness, ’ he answered.

‘I’m a rotter, aren’t I?’

‘I’ve told you - you’re young.’

‘Jake, I don’t want ever to be old. I want always to get up in the morning and feel there’s something grand lying just ahead of me, round the corner, over a hill. I want always to feel that if I stand still, only for a minute, I’m missing something a few yards away. I don’t want ever to find myself thinking: “What’s the use of going across that street?” That’s the end of everything, Jake, when looking for things doesn’t count any more. When you sit back happily in a chair, content with what you’ve got - that’s being old.’

‘There’s no need to get that way. It’s your own thoughts that keep you young, Dick. And age hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s a question of your state of mind.’

‘I don’t care about all that. Oh! Jake - if I could live tremendously, and then die.’

‘What do you call “tremendously”?’

‘I don’t know - but there are a whole lot of things I want to know and to feel. They won’t ever happen though. Fate’ll be against me.’

‘Don’t talk like a fool. There isn’t such a thing as Fate. Everything depends on yourself,’ he said.

‘Everything?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I could think like you, Jake.’

‘It’s easy enough.’

‘You’re strong, you’d win whatever came up against you.You’ve been in hell - in prison - and you weren’t beaten. You’d never have thought of chucking yourself over a bridge even if there’d been the chance - would you?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘There’s a difference in us,’ I said.

‘That’ll never happen to you again,’ he said.