Together and Apart, page 15
Mark flushed. The idea of his own wealth humiliated him. He had fifty thousand pounds and Parkin had not a penny; but the choice of a career was surely quite as important for him as it was for Parkin. He fiercely resented the suggestion that it did not matter very much what he did, since he was bound to be a rich young man. Only lately had the idea of money obtruded itself upon either of them; it played a very small part in life at St Clere’s.
‘You dress up,’ he said, ignoring the interpolation. ‘You put on a wig, and you play a game, rather like chess, with another fellow in a wig. I dare say I should enjoy it. I like problems. If I go to Oxford I should doubtless go to the Bar.’
‘The administration of justice isn’t a game,’ argued Parkin. ‘It’s a very important work that’s got to be done by somebody.’
‘I shouldn’t have to worry about justice, only about winning cases. It would be ages before I became a judge,’ said Mark modestly. ‘Besides, I want to make laws, not administer them.’
‘Then go into politics.’
‘I mean to. But will four years at Oxford give me the training that I want? I don’t believe it will.’
‘I should have thought that a liberal education …’
‘Liberal Poppycock!’ exploded Mark, now well in his stride. ‘It’s all nonsense. Don’t you see what’s happening? What’s the good of all this liberal education? What has it done to us, to the upper middle classes? It’s been used as a sort of strait-jacket. What have we learnt that is going to help us to live? To think? And how far does thinking get us? To a point at which we realize the entire futility of ever doing anything at all, since all action is highly illogical. We think so much that we get frozen up into a sort of mental constipation that keeps us quiet for the rest of our lives. There must be some better way of training the human intelligence. What’s the matter?’
Parkin had made a sudden dive at the bank. But he had been deceived.
‘Nothing …’ he said. ‘I thought it was … anyway, it’s a bit early in the year still. Go on.’
‘You aren’t listening.’
‘I’m listening like hell. What do you say is wrong with the upper middle classes?’
‘We don’t lead. We don’t break new ground. We ought to. We’ve got the capacity and the brains, but the energy … that’s all been drained out of us by this precious liberal education. We go meekly into the job of getting our livings as pleasantly as we can, making it as much like a game as we can. Play up, play up, and play the game! That’s our attitude….’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Parkin. ‘I’ve only once been told to play the game since I’ve been here, and that was by an old boy who preached in Chapel one evening about a mission to the Solomon Islands. You’re flogging a dead horse.’
‘No, I’m not. We know the world is in a filthy state. We know we’re drifting to glory; we can see the smash ahead of us, but do we exert ourselves to stop it? We can’t. We’re too frightened of change. We’re too much rooted in the past. All our energy and intellect is securely tied up; they’ve taken jolly good care of that.’
‘Who is they? The governing body or who? Do you really mean to say that there is a set of people somewhere who sit down solemnly and say: “Now how can we stop Hannay from saving the nation?” I’m surprised at you.’
‘No. It’s done unconsciously, of course. But you must admit that the average public schoolboy, here and elsewhere, is trained to carry on the present system as long as it will last. He isn’t taught to be a leader.’
‘I should jolly well hope not. Just imagine it! Several thousand leaders going down from the Universities every year! Several thousand of ’em all waving pick-axes and out to break new ground. There wouldn’t be any ground left.’
‘But we don’t believe in the present system. We don’t think the world is being run properly: only we’re afraid that when the present system goes we’ll go, and all we stand for. So we back it to save our skins. The only people who dare get a move on are people who’ve escaped a liberal education.’
‘That’s true enough,’ agreed Parkin. ‘But I think it’s always been so. Half-baked fanatics are effective, and get things done. Good things and bad things. The intellectual, the man with a trained mind, doesn’t work for quick returns.’
‘Well, nowadays we’ve got to work for quick returns, or we’ll all go to glory. That’s why I feel I’ve got to make up my mind now. I’m not going to the University. I’m going to get a job on a tramp steamer. In the stokehold.’
‘Oh? How will you set about it? Getting a job like that?’
Mark was not quite sure. Nor could he explain very clearly how life in a stokehold was going to help him.
‘Don’t think I want to pose as Comrade Hannay. I mean to be myself, an intellectual, but an effective intellectual. I want to see how much of all I’ve learnt, up to now, will survive in quite a different kind of life. If it won’t survive it’s no use. Before it’s too late, before I’m set, I want to put myself in a kind of melting pot.’
‘A stokehold ought to be that. What equipment will you need?’
‘Only a sweat rag.’
Parkin laughed so much that Mark was nettled.
‘I suppose you think it’s all rot.’
‘No. No I don’t. I think I see what you mean. But why a stokehold? Isn’t that a bit constricted? What you want is to knock about and meet all sorts. If I were in your shoes I should join the Army for a bit.’
‘You mean enlist as a private?’
‘Yes. You’d see much more life that way.’
‘But that would tie me for years. I only want to think out an alternative for going to Oxford.’
‘It depends. You might go into the gunners, for instance. That need only mean three years with the colours and nine with the reserve. I know that because a boy in our village wanted to enlist and asked my advice and I looked up the details for him. A line regiment would tie you up for seven years. I should find out about the R.F.A. if I were you.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Perfectly serious. I think it would do you a lot of good.’
Mark was struck by the suggestion, but did not entirely relish this last sentence.
‘Do me a lot of good?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well … you’d meet all sorts, and you’d have to learn how to get on with them. That would be very useful, afterwards, when you get going with your pickaxe. If you get on with people they’re more likely to listen to you.’
‘But I should have thought I did get on with people very well.’
‘You do here. You would at Oxford. With your own sort. You haven’t much use for any other sort. I think three years as a private would do you a lot of good even if you went to the Bar afterwards. You seem to be quite sure you’d get work at the Bar, and only worry whether you’ll enjoy doing it. I’ve a brother at the Bar, and what worries him is the difficulty of getting any work at all. If you can’t get on with people, solicitors and so forth, they aren’t likely to give you work.’
‘What’s wrong with me? Why should you think …’
‘You can’t forget your own superiority, and that puts people’s backs up.’
‘I don’t …’ began Mark.
But he broke off, unable to contradict the accusation. From nobody else would he have accepted so much criticism. He had never known the wholesome humiliations of family life and had always been treated far too much like a grown-up person. It had never been anyone’s business to advise or correct him. He had no home. His guardian, an elderly solicitor, looked after the fifty thousand pounds, read his school reports, and saw that he went to the dentist four times a year. When he was younger his guardian’s housekeeper had been responsible for his clothes. If he had nowhere else to go he could always take shelter in his guardian’s house at Wimbledon. But most of his holidays were spent in the homes of his friends where he was treated with consideration as a guest. So long as he remained pleasant, good tempered and well mannered, his arrogance would go uncensured.
He was angry with Parkin, but he was impressed. Their friendship had survived considerable stress, for they were rivals both in scholarship and in status. Many of the masters would have preferred to see Parkin head of the school, and Mark, knowing this, had been obliged to suppress many jealous qualms.
They had come to the end of River Cliff and turned through a small wicket gate which led to the college playing fields. Another pair of strollers stood aside to let the great men pass. One of them was Beddoes, a prefect, but no crony of theirs, a boy with so doubtful a reputation that most right-minded people thought it a scandal that he should be in the sixth at all. The other was Kenneth Canning.
When they were past and out of earshot Mark growled:
‘There’s a liberal education for you!’
In the preceding term he had wanted to make some protest; to take the extreme step of going to the head master and demanding that Beddoes should be deprived of office. But Parkin had dissuaded him, pointing out that they had no conclusive evidence.
‘If it wasn’t Beddoes,’ said Parkin, ‘it would be somebody else. You can’t blame the school. There’s three hundred decent men here and a dozen rotters, if as many. What can you do with a man who inevitably picks up with a rotter? Canning is …’
He paused, remembering that Mark had once been fond of Kenneth.
‘He’s a young horror,’ said Mark grimly. ‘He wasn’t, as long as I kept an eye on him.’
‘Well, you couldn’t keep an eye on him for ever. He’s got to stand on his own feet sometime. But he’s the sort that goes wrong whatever school he’s at. Just as some people pick up any germ that’s going. The school’s all right. It isn’t the school that’s done it. It’s something wrong with him … his home or something.’
‘Yes, it is. It’s his home. He’s been having a bad time. His people were divorced the other day, you know.’
‘Yes. I’d heard. But he’s not the only one.’
‘It all boiled up last summer when I was staying with them. He was in a bad way. He … he wanted to discuss it with me and I shut him up. I’m afraid I hurt his feelings. Any way I know he’s been sore with me ever since.’
‘Oh? Why did you shut him up?’
To explain why was not very easy to Mark.
‘Well, wouldn’t you? Discussing his people when I was staying in the house?’
‘Yes. I see. Beastly situation.’
‘Wouldn’t you have refused to discuss it?’
‘Why it depends. If I’d thought it would do the poor chap any good to get it off his chest … what did he want? Advice what to do or anything?’
‘No. Not exactly. He was frightfully upset.’
‘He just wanted to tell you about it?’
‘How could I listen? What would you have done?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Parkin diffidently. ‘If it was a friend of mine … well … if he wanted to talk I think I’d have listened … and … you know, sympathised and said how frightfully sorry I was. I mean … even if you can’t say anything particularly useful, he might have got it off his mind.’
‘You think I ought …’
‘Nobody could say what you ought to have done unless they were there.’
They were passing the gates of the Sanatorium and Parkin turned aside, explaining that he must drop in and call on a friend with a broken collar bone.
Mark cut back across the fields towards the school. He was by now fully convinced of his own inferiority to Parkin, to anyone possessed of a warm heart. He loathed himself and he loathed the cold-blooded vanity which had betrayed him. For he knew quite well that he had allowed vanity to silence him when Kenneth asked for help. He had failed, he had been ineffective, in a very simple crisis, not from stupidity but from egotism.
And I can’t blame the school, he thought, for my egotism. What am I going to do about it? How can I get rid of it? I shall never be worth anything unless I can get rid of it.
He hunched his gown up on his shoulders and passed under an archway into the cloister. His footsteps rang out on the echoing flags; for hundreds of years those stones had echoed to the pacing of young feet. His trouble was as old as they were but he did not know it, or reflect that he was not probably the first boy to pass that way with a bad conscience.
The Accolade
Eliza heard his footsteps before he came out of the cloister. The great quadrangle, where she stood, was empty and silent save for the cooing of pigeons on the cobbles. Mrs Hewitt and the head master had just gone into the library to look at a new portrait. She should have gone with them but she had lingered behind, afraid lest Kenneth should be looking for them and miss them. The chapel tower soared up into the pale summer sky. She looked up and down and round about, wondering whether she was ever going to see Kenneth. Then she heard firm, quick footsteps coming along the cloisters and thought how much that sound seemed to belong to this place. And because St Clere’s meant Mark, for her, she was not surprised to see him come out into the sunlight from under the great arch. He was as she always saw him in her mind’s eye: dark, vigorous, sombre, pacing along thoughtfully with his gown hunched up on his shoulders. She scarcely dared to speak to him, for fear of interrupting his august musings.
He turned, at her shy greeting, and she saw with dismay that he had not the faintest idea who she was. But he shook hands and enquired cordially after her health.
‘Very well, thank you. I say … do you know where Ken is?’
Now he remembered. But she had grown so much and looked so different that he had been at a loss. She was thinner. Her dress or something had changed her so that she might have been almost grown up. He thought: Schubert … Pandy Madoc … Kenneth’s sister … Eliza … recalling these items in that order.
‘Doesn’t he know you’re here?’
‘No. He didn’t know I was coming. How can I find him? Dr Blakiston told a boy to find him, but that was ages ago. He keeps dragging us round and showing us things, Dr Blakiston, I mean, and they seem to have forgotten we came here to see Ken – not a lot of pictures.’
Mark reflected for a moment. Then he lifted up his voice and bellowed:
‘Fa-ag!’
The shout echoed round the quadrangle. Feet clattered on staircases and half a dozen little boys came pounding up as fast as they could run. One, who came through the gate house, was a good deal behind the rest. Mark waited until the last comer had joined the panting group and then addressed him.
‘You!’
The rest clattered away.
‘Find Canning,’ said Mark, ‘and tell him that his sister is here. He’s somewhere on River Cliff. You’ll catch him if you run. You’ve my leave to go on River Cliff.’
As the little boy set off Eliza asked:
‘Do you always choose the last one who comes?’
‘Yes. It teaches them to hurry. How did you get here? Isn’t anybody with you?’
‘It’s my half term,’ she explained, ‘and I’m spending it at Malvern with my grandmother, Mrs Hewitt I mean. She’s doing a sort of cure there. So she asked me what I’d like to do today and I said I’d like to come over and see Ken, because it’s quite near really, by motor bus. But it was only decided at lunch-time so I couldn’t let Ken know.’
‘Where is your grandmother?’
‘Oh, she’s in the library with Dr Blakiston. They are great friends, you know. He’s asked us to tea but I wish he hadn’t, because I want to talk to Ken.’
‘I see. Well, wouldn’t you rather have tea with us?’
‘With you and Ken?’ exclaimed Eliza beaming.
‘He hasn’t got a study you know. He’s not in the sixth. But we can use mine. How is Daphne? She’s not here, is she?’
‘No. She’s gone with a friend for half term. Ken will come, won’t he?’
‘Sure to.’
At this point the head master and Mrs, Hewitt emerged from the library. Mark went across to them and got leave to entertain the Cannings in his study.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, coming back to Eliza. ‘They say you and Kenneth can have tea with me.’
And he took her across towards the gate house. He saw that she was excited and nervous. She scarcely listened when he pointed out the glories of his study, a beautiful little panelled room which had always belonged, by right, to the head of the school.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it before. Listen! If Ken doesn’t come, if you’ll tell me where to look, perhaps I’d better go after him myself….’
‘That boy is sure to find him. It’s impossible to miss anyone on River Cliff. You wouldn’t find him any quicker yourself.’
‘But supposing he won’t come. I’m so afraid that other boy, the boy Dr Blakiston sent, did find him, and he just wouldn’t come.’
Mark looked his amazement.
‘You see,’ she added, ‘… perhaps you didn’t know … I haven’t seen him since last summer. Since Pandy Madoc and the end of the holidays last summer.’
‘Not seen him? But at Christmas and Easter …’
‘No. At Christmas he was in Paris with mother. And at Easter I was in quarantine for mumps, so I stayed in our school San. all the holidays. And he hasn’t written either. He hasn’t answered my letters. That’s why I felt I simply must come. Oh, Mark! Do you know what is the matter with him? You’re his great friend. Has he said any thing to you … about being angry with me?’
‘No, nothing. Not a word.’
Her eyes searched his face anxiously.
‘He’s quite all right?’
‘Absolutely. As far as I know.’
‘I had a sort of feeling that he wasn’t. You … you know what has happened to us, don’t you, Mark?’
‘About your people? The divorce? Yes. I’m very sorry. I expect it’s been an uncomfortable sort of time for everybody.’
‘It’s been beastly. Did Ken tell you about it? What is he choosing? Did he say?’
‘Choosing?’
‘You know my mother is to have us till we are sixteen and then we can choose. Of course Ken is seventeen and I know he has chosen to stay with her. But, you see, I shall be sixteen next birthday. And I want rather … I’m not sure … I can’t bear absolutely to give my father up. But I can’t bear to give up Ken either. So I thought, if only Ken and I could talk about it sensibly, we might persuade them to sort of share us, so that we didn’t have to be so broken up. Ken could get mother to agree, I’m sure he could. But I don’t know how he feels and if he is still so violently on mother’s side. Can’t you tell me?’
