The Girl in a Swing Read online

thoroughly unfortunate and discreditable business which

  luckily no one knew about - rather as though I had borrowed

  without asking and then broken the pen or squash racquet of

  some other boy who had generously promised to say nothing

  about it. I knew I should have to give Morton some sort

  of answer - one could not reply to a College prefect 'What

  damned business is it of yours?' - but I played for time and

  said, 'I've no idea, I'm afraid, Morton.'

  'Oh, yes, you have,' he persisted. 'Come on, what's it all

  about?'

  'Well, it's some nonsense of Cook's,' I said, with a flash

  of inspiration. 'He finds what he wants to find - that every22

  one who's doing these tests is psychic or telepathic, or some

  ruddy thing or other. The whole idea's an utter waste of

  time.'

  'And going to tea with Ma Cook - I suppose that's a waste

  of time, too, is it?' asked Morton, leering.

  'I don't think that calls for telepathy, really, Morton.'

  There was room for only one idea at a time in Morton's

  head. The one he had started with had now been replaced by

  another - or more probably, Mrs Cook had been the one he

  had started with; Sharp was likely to have said more about

  her than about me. But as a College prefect Morton could

  hardly discuss with a totally undistinguished fifth-former his

  fierce affections and thoughts of what Venus did with Mars.

  Snorting 'Huh! - one-track mind - like everyone else in "E"

  House,' he disappeared into the junior common room. Even

  then, this struck me as a classic example of projecting one's

  own proclivity on to someone else. Thou rascal beadle, hold

  thy bloody hand.

  The fact was, as I soon began to realize, that I felt regretful,

  and lowered in my self-respect, not only by what I

  thought of as my disgracefully uncontrolled and hysterical

  outburst in the Cooks' drawing-room, but also by my lewd

  reaction to Mrs Cook touching me. If I was fastidious, even

  puritanical, in this, there were causes originating well back

  in my childhood. For years past there had hovered in my

  tracks a kind of ambivalent familiar, at once harsh and

  tutelary (or so I personified him to myself in my inward

  fancy) - one who would close behind me tread for many

  years to come. What he assured me was that I was physically

  unattractive - ugly, not to mince words. Such at all events

  was my belief, and I felt it endorsed both by the mirror and

  by those who had to do with me. 'Such a pity he's not a

  prettier little boy!' I had heard an old lady say, from the

  other side of the French windows, one hot summer afternoon

  when I was six. 'And the mother such a pretty girl, too,' her

  companion replied. It may have been a year later, in the

  playground, that I hesitantly offered a toffee to the class

  beauty, a spoilt, curly-haired chit called Elaine Somers.

  23

  'Thanks, Pig-face,' she said, off-hand but not unfriendly, as

  she pocketed it to eat later. From the way she spoke I knew

  that was what they called me. I left her without a word.

  Years before I could understand exactly what it implied, I

  - a caddis larva crawling on the river-bed - had built firmly

  into my stick-and-sand case the notion that as far as I was

  concerned, silken dalliance was destined to lie permanently

  in the wardrobe. I never kissed or embraced anyone if I could

  help it - not even my mother, whom of course I loved dearly

  - and if anyone kissed me I froze, letting them perceive that

  it gave me no pleasure. There was a kind of bitter pride here,

  like that of a lame boy who resents being given a hand.

  This was my fate, so I thought. Very well, I would play the

  ball as it lay and work out my own style of reciprocity; one

  that had no need of touching, either with hands or lips. Long

  before the unsought, spontaneous time-bomb of my first

  orgasm went off by night in the sleeping dormitory, nolime-tangere

  had become an accepted, no-longer-even-conscious

  part of myself.

  The beautiful, I think, often remain unaware of their

  wealth, sweeter than honey in the honeycomb, taking for

  granted the smooth lawns, tapestry meadows and shimmering

  woods in which they are privileged to wander with their

  own kind; idly supposing, when they give it a thought, that

  all but the deformed, perhaps, are equally free to roam there

  to any extent they please. To be in no least doubt about

  one's physical attractiveness - that must be strange - as

  strange as being an Esquimau. Yet the Esquimau does not

  consider himself strange. 'Twill not be noticed in him there.

  There the folk are all as mad as he. At sixteen I had become

  adapted to the handicap I believed I carried. It was something

  like tone-deafness, or vertigo on heights, and was perfectly

  livable-with. One simply avoided music - or heights.

  After all, it could have been enuresis, diabetes or epilepsy.

  Paradoxically, however, I did briefly enjoy, while still at

  Bradfield, what virtually no one else did - a bona fide, happy

  and perfectly legitimate relationship with a real, live girl only

  a year or two older than I; though there was nothing in the

  least physical or in any way incandescent about it and I did

  24

  not even feel any very deep sorrow when it came to an end

  in unhappy circumstances. During my last term - the summer

  term of 1958 - having already, the previous February, won

  an exhibition in modern languages to Wadham, I had a fairly

  free hand; no one minding much, as long as I observed the

  decencies, whether I did a great deal of work or not. I was

  therefore a natural for co-option into the back-stage team

  helping a master called David Raeburn to produce the Greek

  play, which that year was the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. In

  this capacity I turned my hand to all kinds of things, for I

  had come to have a real love for the Greek theatre, that

  unique glory and splendour of Bradfield; and although I never

  felt any desire to act, was always happy knocking about in it.

  I painted flats, repaired and furbished weapons and helmets,

  heard people's lines and, if requested, was not even above

  clipping the ivy or sweeping the terraces with a besom.

  One of the housemasters had a Danish wife, and this lady's

  niece, a rather hefty girl of about twenty, was living with

  them for a year to improve - or rather, to perfect, for she

  was already fluent and idiomatic - her English. She became

  known as 'the Danish pastry', for she was not particularly

  good-looking - a rare thing for a Dane, as I was later to discover.

  If she had been I should not, of course, have had a

  look-in, but as things were there was no competition. Kirsten

  had also fallen under the spell of the Greek theatre, and

  readily signed on for the duration under Raeburn's banner.

  She was handy with a Primus and had learned to make good

  tea. She also caused amusement by coaching Clytemnestra

  and Cassandra, very
competently, in moving and gesturing

  like women. As the production developed she became more

  and more absorbed in it, learned to read (though not, of

  course, to construe) Greek (any more than I could) and at

  rehearsals would usually sit high up at the back of the auditorium,

  her large bottom uncushioned on the bare stone,

  from time to time whispering the lines under her breath as

  they were spoken below. I would sit with her, text in hand,

  and I can still hear the tense, suppressed excitement and

  delight with which she would begin, with the Watchman,

  "Qeovs |U,ei> atTtS r�>v8' aTraAAay^v irov
  25

  She was once more taking the first, joyous step into Aeschylus'

  word-perfected, gravely-stylized world. I stepped beside

  her: and later, would stroll back with her as far as her

  aunt's garden gate. We never touched one another and our

  conversation could have been overheard by anyone without

  embarrassment to either of us.

  I remember how we argued about the character of Clytemnestra

  and whether, after her killing of Agamemnon, she

  feels either guilt or dread. To Kirsten she was nothing more

  than a selfish, insensitive murderess, fully expecting to get

  away with her crime and fearing nothing in the security of

  her royal power and the protection of her lover Aegisthus. I

  was not so sure that this was what Aeschylus had meant, and

  to find out more went the length of reading, in translation,

  the second play of the trilogy, the Choephoroi (such as it is,

  for the surviving text is incomplete). This is the play in which,

  some considerable time after the murder, Clytemnestra's son

  Orestes, who has fled from Mycenae, returns as a stranger

  to revenge his father by killing her. Still mystified, I asked

  Raeburn whether or not he thought that Clytemnestra recognizes

  Orestes on his return. 'Of course she does,' he

  replied. 'She knows him at once. She's been waiting for this

  for years.' 'Then why doesn't she say anything?' 'Because she

  knows there's nothing to be done but submit to what the

  gods have appointed. She can only keep her dignity.' Yet

  Kirsten could not accept an interpretation which involved

  feeling at least some sympathy for the cruel and bloody Clytemnestra;

  and there the enigma remained between us. I

  liked her still more for her tenacity.

  I see now, of course, that unconsciously I recognized and

  respected a fellow-creature - a non-starter in the Aphrodite

  stakes. Yet affection and warmth of feeling, though unexpressed,

  certainly lay between us, as I discovered one day

  to my own surprise. A boy called Hassall, seeing me approaching

  Grubs, on the grass outside which he was eating icecream

  with some of his cronies, called out, 'Here comes the

  pastry-cook!' Thereupon, without hesitation or reflection, I

  knocked him clean down Major bank and hurt him quite

  badly, after which I simply walked away without a word. For

  26

  me, this sort of thing was so unusual that it evidently reached

  the ears of my housemaster, an experienced, understanding

  man with whom I had always got on well; for a day or two

  later, meeting me coming through the College gateway, he

  remarked, 'Hullo, Desland, off for some more useful work

  with your friend in the Greek theatre?' I simply answered,

  'Yes, sir.' 'Well, keep your hair on about it,' he said. 'Legpulling

  doesn't always call for drastic measures, you know.'

  We both smiled, and I replied, 'I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen

  again.'

  I heard a good deal about Denmark from Kirsten, and

  naturally began to feel that I should like to go there and see

  for myself some of the places she talked about. One day, as

  we were walking through Hillside on our way back from a

  Sunday afternoon rehearsal, she suggested rather tentatively

  that I might perhaps consider coming over during my first

  long vac. the following summer, when she would have returned

  home to Arhus.

  'The cathedral's well worth seeing, you know,' she said.

  'It's the largest church in Denmark. A lot of it's late restoration,

  but basically it's thirteenth-century and very beautiful.'

  'I'd love to come,' I answered. 'For the matter of that, I

  might very well manage a visit before the end of this year either

  this September or else a bit before Christmas.'

  'Oer, that would be loervely, but of course I shan't be there

  then.'

  'Won't you, Kirsten? Why, where will you be?'

  'I shall be here still, of course. I stay until the end of the

  year.'

  'But that's not what you told me - when was it? - anyway,

  surely not? You're leaving before the end of August.'

  'I have not told you that, Alan. What do you mean?'

  'Well, I simply mean - well, what I said. I know that, so

  you must have told me.'

  'Someone else must have told you something wrong. I'm

  staying here until the end of this year. That's never been

  different, so I couldn't have said it was.'

  I was about to argue the matter when I realized how cornpletely

  pointless - not to say irritating - it would be to do

  27

  so. Obviously she knew what her own arrangements were.

  But I had been equally sure - certain, in my own mind - that

  she was not going to be at Bradfield after August. If she had

  not told me, who had? I had hardly ever spoken to her

  uncle, the housemaster - our paths did not cross - let alone

  his wife. I was reminded of a time a few years before -1 must

  have been about eleven - when I had told a certain Mrs Best,

  an acquaintance of my mother who had dropped in to tea,

  that, being out on my bicycle two evenings before, I had seen

  her going into The Swan at Newtown. She had smilingly but

  firmly told me I was mistaken - she had not been there.

  Knowing very well that I was right, I persisted. My mother

  sent me down the garden to get some parsley and on the

  way back intercepted me on the verandah. 'Alan, I'm sure

  you're right, but for some reason she doesn't want to say

  so.' 'But why not, Mummy?' 'I don't know. It's very silly, to

  say nothing of being not true, but we'd better leave it at

  that.' About six months afterwards Mrs Best was divorced

  and she and her lover left the district, but of course it was

  not until a good deal later that I put the two things together.

  This was different, however. Who could possibly want to

  deceive me about Kirsten? What was more, I still had the

  odd feeling - as with Mrs Best - that I was right, come hell

  or high water. Mrs Best had left her mark, though. I

  apologized and said I would plan a visit to Denmark for the

  following summer.

  But I had another, scarcely-conscious reason for saying no

  more. There was something disturbing about the business. I

  felt apprehension and a faint, though distinct, nervous

  anxiety, rather like that of a small child who has stumbled

  on something he does not understand but intuiti
vely feels

  to be beyond him, such as his mother's infidelity or some

  symptom of illness that she does not want to be disclosed.

  And, like a child, I hastened to get out of the way, to forget

  what I had inadvertently come upon under a stone.

  Once the Agamemnon was over, a good six weeks and more

  before the end of term, Kirsten and I naturally saw less of

  each other. We didn't arrange to correspond in the holidays

  or make any immediate plans to meet again. That, of course,

  28

  would have been up to me rather than her, and I suppose

  it was a case of 'Distress makes the humble heart diffident';

  or perhaps the plant, deprived of Agamemnon, had little to

  keep it flourishing. In any case, I was due to join my family

  in Spain the day after term ended, and what with this and

  the exciting prospect of going up to Wadham in October,

  Kirsten rather faded out along with Bradfield.

  Soon after the beginning of the Michaelmas term at Oxford

  my housemaster dropped me a line, hoped all was going

  well and said that if I thought it worth my while it would be

  nice if I were to come along to the Old Boys' dinner in November.

  Since I could conveniently fit this in with an Alec Guinness

  production which I particularly wanted to see, I duly

  turned up at the Connaught Rooms. As is customary at

  these affairs, the current head boy - also a modern linguist

  and hence an acquaintance of mine - was among the guests,

  and after dinner we fell into conversation.

  'What a shame, isn't it, Desland,' he said, 'about that poor

  Danish girl? Friend of yours, wasn't she?'

  'Kirsten? Why, what's happened?' I asked.

  'Good grief! You mean you don't know anything about it?'

  'No,' I said, 'I've heard nothing. What on earth are you

  talking about?'

  'Well, apparently she's got leukaemia and it's very serious.

  They sent her home soon after the beginning of last holidays.

  Tebbett had me into his study the first evening of term and

  asked me to let the house know as quietly as possible. He

  seemed awfully cut up about it: so's Ma Tebbett, naturally.'

  I never heard what became of her. I don't know now.

  There were, of course, no firm grounds at all - nothing

  that anyone else would think in the least convincing - for

  believing that I had had any kind of foreknowledge. Yet lying

  awake that night, recalling this and that about Kirsten - her

  quick, absent-minded little 'Tak' when I passed her the turpentine-soaked

  rag to clean the paint off her hands, or the

  tight, unconscious clutching of her fingers as the third chorus

  closed and she waited for Agamemnon's terrible death-cry

  from the palace - I came back always to the fact that, although

  I had pretended otherwise to her and to myself, I

  29

  had remained inwardly unconvinced by what she had said

  on the Hillside path that Sunday evening. Without recognizing

  as much, I had gone on being sure that she would no

  longer be at Bradfield in the autumn, and the knowledge

  was not due to anything I had been told. I could not help

  feeling upset and - well, I suppose, frightened. Was this sort

  of thing likely to happen again? For a few days I worried

  about it, off and on. Then I did the only thing I could do that

  is, what I had done on the Hillside path, and what any

  older person whose advice I had asked would certainly have

  told me to do - began to think of Kirsten as someone I had

  known at one time but would probably never meet again

  (when we are young we have little enough pity until trouble

  has taught us our own need for it), metaphorically shrugged

  my shoulders about my intuition - if that was what it had

  been - and turned my attention back to the highly enjoyable

  but demanding new life I had begun to lead.

  AT Oxford I continued, of course, with French and German

  for my degree, but also made time to acquire at least a working

  grip of Italian - a rewarding language, to say nothing of

  the relative ease of learning it. Also, while still in my freshman

  year, I began amusing myself with Danish. I still meant

  to visit Denmark at some time or other, but apart from that,

  I had been bitten by the bug of tongues and, like an adolescent

  girl who has taken to horses, could not, for the time

  being, have too much of the pentecostal stables. I joined the