The Jury (12 page)

This kind of thing happened two or three evenings a week during the first summer of the acquaintanceship. Yet, back within the precincts of school, it was Prescott that Simpson sought out, Prescott he confided in; and Bonaker, without the least resentment, discreetly followed his own devices. And though the official leisure was severely limited, a break in morning school and a break in the afternoon, in practice there was no lack of social intercourse. Discipline was strict only in intention, and, among many lessons, the chief thing Simpson learned at his day-school was the art of surreptitious note-passing and of conversing unobserved under the very nose of the master. As a supplement to the official time-table of lessons, Simpson and Prescott drew up a time-table of their own, showing what subjects they proposed to discuss together at what hours. It was not in nature that they should keep to the programme, but it was fun drawing it up, and it never occurred to either of them that it constituted a shattering criticism of Mr Stark's history teaching, for example, that while he wrote dates and sentences on the blackboard, and referred them to this page or that, they proposed to make,
sotto voce,
a systematic inquiry into questions they were supposed not to be interested in. Religion, psychical research, the possibility of reaching the moon: such things were meat and drink to Prescott and Simpson. But Bonaker was not like that. Bonaker would discover America with you any fine evening of the week, but when it came to disquisition at large, or to arguments about one's origin and destiny, you couldn't have got a word out of him. Quite unruffled he would have said ‘Yes' or ‘No' or would have put the whole question aside with a non-committal grunt and got on with the job: whether it was playing cricket, pretending to be a pirate, or merely walking to school, there was always a job
to be got on with, and Bonaker got on with it. Simpson knew this without testing it, without thinking about it: it never occurred to him to talk to Bonaker as he talked with Prescott. His instinct had been sound in that. Now, a quarter of a century later, he was more apt to blunder, to attempt the impossible.

“Do you remember …” The most heartening conversations in the world begin with this phrase. But Simpson ought to have known better than to expect a riot of reminiscence from Bonaker. Bonaker said Yes he remembered, but Simpson was not encouraged to proceed with his litany of remembered episodes, episodes which, like Bonaker himself, had for him the surpassing value that anything must have, however trivial, which seems to restore to a man some part of his lost life. He wanted to recall to Bonaker's mind the fight he and Bonaker had had with Netherwood, the great boaster; but instead of that he began asking the usual questions. Yes, Bonaker was married. Yes, he had children: three of them. Yes, he lived in London. What was he doing in these parts? He was here on business: had several people to see on business.

He belonged to a firm that supplied sanitary plumbing requisites. How right, how exquisitely right, thought Simpson. A traveller in water-closets! What a good, solid, sensible way of earning one's bread: prosaic, necessary, dignified, and just like old Bonaker. “How did you get on in the war?” he asked. But it was another fight he was thinking of, the fight with Netherwood which had been fought twenty-three years ago in the brickfields of Broad Green. He could hardly listen to Bonaker's answer, so deeply was he immersed in the past. A foreigner in effect, this Netherwood: he went to another school, a cads' school. He attached himself to Bonaker and Simpson one evening when they were having some cricket practice. Without invitation he began fielding; without invitation he said he'd show them how to bowl; and presently, as a matter of right, he took possession of the bat and remarked that he didn't mind having a whack himself. Simpson was resentful but polite; Bonaker was Bonaker, silent and inscrutable. Finally, having knocked his young friends all over the field, Netherwood relinquished the
bat with a laugh and said: “I'm Netherwood. You've heard of me.”

“No, we haven't,” said Simpson.

“Oh, haven't you!” Netherwood gave him an ugly look. “I go to Farringay School. I go by train every day.”

Simpson held his peace. Bonaker said: “Do you?”

“Yes, I jolly well do. It's a better school than yours, you little sops.”

“How long were you at our school?” asked Bonaker.

Netherwood stared, divided between wrath and perplexity. “Whadjou talking about? I never went to your school. My father knew better.”

“Then how do you know yours is better than ours?” asked Bonaker. “I mean, if you haven't been to ours,” he added, with an air of genuinely seeking information.

Netherwood thought he was being got at. “All right,” he said. “I'll fight you. What d'you say?” He peeled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

“Mind you don't catch cold,” said Bonaker.

The answer to that was a vicious slap on the face. Bonaker, without exciting himself, stepped back and removed his jacket. Simpson began following suit, but his friend said No, he'd see to this himself. “You stand by and see fair play, Sim.” And so they went at it. It was a fight not according to the Queensberry rules, being a kind of cross between boxing and catch-as-catch-can. Bonaker got decidedly the worst of it: he was badly knocked about, and Netherwood celebrated his triumph by sitting astride the chest of the vanquished, and forcing his arms into the posture of crucifixion.

“Which school's better now?” demanded Netherwood, with a sneer.

For a while Bonaker was too short of breath to achieve an answer. The question was repeated. Sundry promises of torture were made.

“I don't know,” gasped Bonaker at length.

The victor interpreted this answer as a sign of weakening morale. “Oh, you don't know, don't you? Why don't you know, eh?”

“Because I've only been to one of them,” said Bonaker.

While Netherwood spent half a second devising his revenge
Simpson intervened. He felt he had been inactive too long. “Get off him, you swine! Get off him, and quick.” He brandished a cricket stump, and Netherwood, jumping up, gave ground. Bonaker, too, was now on his legs again; but it was against their code to set upon the alien unless he showed further fight. Instead of doing that he walked away, whistling a tune, trying not to look as though he feared pursuit.

“Does it hurt much, Bon?” The reference was to Bonaker's right eye, which was closed and discoloured.

Beyond shrugging his shoulders, Bonaker took no notice of the question. And, after a thoughtful silence, “I wonder which really
is
the better school,” he said.

THE morning after that second visit to Soho, three men woke with the thought of Daphne uppermost in their minds. One suffered a pang of nervous sickness in the thought that today he would be obliged to see her; one with fresh appetite resumed a bitter feast, eating his own heart out because she was not for him; the third, before rolling out of bed, played for a moment with the question whether or not he should contrive to see her today. Roderick rose stealthily and left Elisabeth sleeping. He hardly dared to glance at her, for he knew, and she knew, that today's interview with Daphne held danger for them: he doubted, and he knew that she doubted, whether he had resolution enough to stand out against the demands of Daphne's pride and desolation. His mind assured him again and again that he was fully justified in leaving his wife, that he was only acting on principles which they had both affirmed, that to resume a loveless marriage would be merely the wanton sacrifice of himself and Elisabeth on the altar of Daphne's vanity. But a small voice out of the past, which he was in danger of mistaking for the voice of conscience, insisted on urging him towards this sacrifice, regardless of consequences. It's my duty to make Daphne happy. But one can't make another person happy
unless one is happy oneself. Besides, I don't want her, and to pretend I do would be disgusting, an outrage. But is it true I don't want her? At this last question he wavered. In his heart he knew that eight years of marriage, even of a marriage that was largely unsatisfactory, had bound him to Daphne with bonds of habit that were indistinguishable from affection. He knew that she was no longer sexually interesting to him; and he knew, too well, that this was by no means the result of any diminution or sublimation of his own sexuality. These three facts remained to confront him whenever he could escape for a moment from the more immediate, the overwhelming fact, that he was in love with Elisabeth Andersch. He took them to the office with him this Wednesday morning, and sat at his desk staring at them moodily. He felt that it was essential to get this attitude defined, his policy planned, before seeing Daphne.

“Well, Roderick my boy?”

“Hullo?” said Roderick. “Good morning.” It was Cradock, his venerable senior partner. The two liked and admired each other up to a point. Beyond that point—but it was Roderick's resolve that they should never go beyond that point, for he was well aware that outside the sphere of their common professional interests most of his convictions would seem to Cradock wrong-headed and pernicious. Certain questions that still agitated Roderick had been settled for Cradock for half a century and would never be reopened. On all matters of conduct and religious belief his mind was rigid, and he had no difficulty in averting his eyes from anything that challenged the faith of his fathers. He lived in a small universe of unshakable certitudes, and it would have disturbed and even angered him had he supposed Roderick to be anything but the right-thinking young fellow he took him for. In Cradock's philosophy a fellow was either a gentleman or a cad, and he had no doubts of Roderick.

“Well, Roderick, they've given us the new court.”

Roderick looked vague. “The new court?” Then he remembered. “By Jove, you've pulled it off? Congratulations.”

“Come,” said Cradock heartily, “it's
your
work, my boy. Well, you've got something now to keep you happy for a time.”

Roderick grinned. “Busy, anyhow.”

“Same thing,” said Cradock, with a wave of the hand, and went back to his own room.

Something in that, thought Roderick, trite though it is. Where but to think is to be full of sorrows, don't stop to think. Even in love don't stop to think. Corrosive stuff, thought: it eats happiness away. He saw the undergraduates moving about that new court of his. What will they learn there? Not the difference between right and wrong. Nobody knows that—except Cradock, of course, and poor old Dad. For at last it came up into consciousness, the lurking thought of his father and all that his father stood for. A gentle old man with a cure of souls. Was that true or was it mere sentimentality? An old man pottering about his vicarage garden in Somerset, with a kind word for everyone (even the dissenters), a skilful hand with bees, an expert knowledge of roses, and a bland simplicity (or was it cunning?) in face of modern scepticism. An old man, full of good works, who even now, at an advanced age and with a curate to rely on, insisted on keeping in touch with the village, shaking his head sadly over the tipplers, rebuking the uncharitable, visiting the bedridden, smiling benignly on the ‘young men and maidens', and comforting the dying with false promises of resurrection. It was all very pretty and idyllic, and Roderick could not resist the conviction that his father was a kind of saint; but had it any bearing on his problem? Would it indeed darken his father's last days on earth if Roderick, the apple of his eye, was proved rotten at core? Would it indeed darken his days, or would he only pretend that it did—pretend, that is, to himself? It was difficult to know what to believe, and to put an end to his speculation Roderick touched the buzzer on his desk, and the demure young woman who typed his letters for him came gliding into the room, note-book in hand.

“Oh, Miss Stephens! Good morning. Could you ask them to get Mr Perryman at the
Evening Sun?
Put him through here.”

He turned over the letters on his desk while Miss Stephens spoke into the telephone. When she put up the receiver he cleared his throat and said: “Dear Sir …” What was Elisabeth doing at this moment? And what was Daphne
doing and thinking? Tonight he must see her and they would have a tremendous discussion. Discussion? What was there to discuss? He would feel like a defaulting debtor, asking to be let off. “It isn't that I don't love you,” he'd say. “It's simply …” For he had to keep on saying that. He couldn't bring himself to tell her point-blank that his love was dead, and, worse than dead, a dream in which he no longer believed and by which he felt himself to have been unfairly trapped. He couldn't tell her this. Perhaps because he was squeamish, a moral coward; perhaps because it wasn't the whole truth. Then what was the truth, and how could it be found? The feeling of the moment was the only convincing truth, and in that there was no stability. Anything rather than give up Elisabeth. Anything rather than go on hurting Daphne.

Miss Stephens was still waiting. “Dear Sir …” repeated Roderick guiltily.

The telephone-bell rang. “That will be your call,” said Miss Stephens.

She gathered up her note-book and was fading out of his presence, but at the door she was called back. Roderick snatched up a document and thrust it towards her. “Hullo, Mark. … They'll want this in the drawing-office, Miss Stephens. … Yes, Roderick here.” He listened to Mark's voice and then said: “Make it half-past, can you? All right. What a chap you are for pubs, Mark!”

Most mornings, between twelve and one, Mark Perryman and others of his profession were to be found gathered round the bar of their chosen Fleet Street pub, discussing life and death and the many books they would write had they but world enough and time. From ten till noon, in the offices of the
Evening Sun,
he concocted obsequious anonymous paragraphs about newspaper celebrities; from four till six or seven he sat in a building on the other side of the Street, writing for the
Morning Echo,
under the pseudonym of Peter Punctilio, a daily column of derision, choosing for his butts precisely that cant and hypocrisy which the
Morning Echo
was so zealous to conserve. But from noon till late afternoon he took his ease, consorting with his peers. Roderick Strood, though he would have hotly repudiated the suggestion that he disapproved of men meeting in bars, was never quite at his
ease in these surroundings. It was a foreign country to him, and the scene of much criminal waste of time, to say nothing of money. To Mark, on the other hand, it was England, Home, and Beauty; and unless his guest was a woman he seldom thought of appointing any other rendezvous. It was here that, at Daphne's request, seconded by Roderick, he had some few months ago made Brian Goodeve's acquaintance; and it was here that he was to meet Roderick himself this morning.