Darkness Visible: With an Introduction by Philip Hensher Read online

  Two of the boys who had taken particularly against Matty’s high-mindedness, mostly because they were of exceptional low-mindedness, set out with the directness and simplicity of genius to play on all his weaknesses at once.

  “We been talking to the girls, see?”

  And later—“They’ve been talking about you.”

  And later—“Angy’s sweet on you, Matty, she keeps asking about you.”

  Then—“Angy said she wouldn’t mind a walk in the woods with you!”

  Matty limped away from them.

  Next day they gave him a note, which in a confusion of ideas from the adult world they had printed then signed. Matty inspected the note, torn from a rough workbook like the one he had in his own hand. The golf balls emerged from his mouth.

  “Why didn’t she write it? I don’t believe it. You’re having me on!”

  “But look, it’s got her name there, ‘Angy’. I expect she thought you wouldn’t believe her unless she signed it.”

  Shrieks of laughter.

  If Matty had known anything at all about girls of school age he would have seen that they would never send a note on such paper. It was an early example of sexual differentiation. A boy, unless deflected, would apply for a job on the back of an old envelope. But if girls got hold of stationery the results were liable to be frightful, purple, scented and strewn with flowers. Nevertheless, Matty believed in the note torn from the corner of a rough workbook.

  “She’s there now Matty! She wants you to show her something—”

  Matty stared from one to the other under lowered eyebrows.

  The undamaged side of his face flushed red. He said nothing.

  “Honestly Matty!”

  They crowded in on him. He was taller than they were but stooped by his condition. He laboured at words and got them out.

  “What does she want?”

  The three heads came as close now as they could get. Almost at once, the redness sank away in his face so that the spots of his adolescence seemed even more definite against their white background. He breathed his answer.

  “She didn’t!”

  “Honestly!”

  He looked at each face in turn, his mouth left open. It was a strange look. So a man swimming in the deep ocean might lift his head and stare before him in search of land. There was a trace of light in the look, hope struggling with a natural pessimism.

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly!”

  “Cross your heart?”

  Once more shrieks of laughter.

  “Cross my heart!”

  Again that aimed, imploring look, movement of a hand that tried to brush aside banter.

  “Here—”

  He thrust his books into their hands and limped quickly away. They held on to each other, laughing like apes. They broke apart, clamorously collected their fellows. The whole troupe clattered up the stone stairs, up, up, one, two, three storeys to the landing by the great window. They pushed and shoved against the great bar that ran from one end to the other at boy-height, and held the verticals that were less than a boy’s width apart. Fifty yards away and fifty feet down a boy limped quickly towards the forbidden tree. Two little patches of blue did indeed show above the wall opposite it on the girls’ side. The boys along the window were so entranced they never heard the door open behind them.

  “What on earth is all this? What are you men doing up here?”

  Mr Pedigree stood in the doorway, nervously holding the doorknob and looking from one end of the row of laughing boys to the other. But none of them minded old Pedders.

  “I said what’s all this? Are there any of my men here? You, the lad with the lovely locks, Shenstone!”

  “It’s Windy, sir. He’s climbing the tree!”

  “Windy? Who’s Windy?”

  “There he is, sir, you can see him, he’s just getting up!”

  “Oh you are a feeble, nasty, inky lot. I’m surprised at you, Shenstone, a fine upstanding lad like you—”

  Scandalized, gleeful laughter—

  “Sir, sir, he’s doing it now—”

  There was a kind of confusion among the leaves of a lower bough. The blue, sexy patches disappeared from the wall as if they had been knocked off by shot. Mr Pedigree clapped his hands and shouted but none of the boys paid any attention. They went cascading down the stairs, and left him there, flushed and more agitated by what was behind him than in front. He looked after them down the well of the stairs. He spoke sideways into the room and held the door open.

  “Very well my dear. You can run along now.”

  The boy came out, smiling confidently up at Mr Pedigree. He went away down the stairs, assured of his own worth.

  When he had gone Mr Pedigree stared irritatedly at the distant boy who was coming unhandily down the tree. Mr Pedigree had no intention of interfering—none whatever.

  The headmaster heard from the Mother Superior. He sent for the boy who came limping and spotty and anxious. The headmaster was sorry for him and tried to make things easy. The episode had been described by the Mother Superior in such words as hid it behind a veil which the headmaster knew he must lift; and yet he viewed the lifting of a veil with some apprehension. He knew that lifting any veil was liable to uncover more than the investigator bargained for.

  “Sit down there, will you? Now. You see we’ve had this complaint about you. About what you did when you climbed that tree. Young men—boys—will climb trees, that’s not what I’m asking you about—but there may be considerable consequences coming from your action, you know. Now. What did you do?”

  The unmended side of the boy’s face became one deep, red flush. He looked down past his knees.

  “You see, my dear boy, there’s nothing to be— frightened of. People sometimes can’t help themselves. If they are sick then we help them or find people who can help them. Only we must know!”

  The boy neither spoke nor moved.

  “Show me, then, if that’s easier for you.”

  Matty glanced up under his eyebrows then down again. He was breathing quickly as if he had been running. He took his right hand across and took hold of the long lock dangling by his left ear. With a gesture of absolute abandon he ripped the hair across and exposed the white obscenity of his scalp.

  It was perhaps fortunate that Matty did not see how the headmaster shut his eyes involuntarily, then forced them open and kept them open without any change of expression in his face. They both said nothing for a while until the headmaster nodded understandingly and Matty, relaxing, brought the hair back across his head.

  “I see,” said the headmaster. “Yes. I see.”

  Then for a while he said nothing but thought of phrases that might go in his letter to the Mother Superior.

  “Well,” he said at last, “don’t do it again. Go along now. And please remember you are only allowed to climb the big beech and even then, up to the second bough. Right?”

  “Sir.”

  After that, the headmaster sent round the various masters concerned to find out more about Matty and it was obvious that someone had been too kind—or perhaps unkind—and he was in a stream that was too much for him. The boy would never pass an examination and it was silly to make him try.

  It was for this reason, therefore, that one morning when Mr Pedigree was dozing in front of his class as they drew a map, that Matty came clumping in, books under his arm, and stopped in front of the master’s desk.

  “Good God boy. Where have you come from?”

  It seemed the question was too quick or too profound for Matty. He said nothing.

  “What d’you want, boy? Say quickly!”

  “I was told, sir. C.3, sir. The room at the end of the corridor.”

  Mr Pedigree gave a determined grin and wrenched his gaze away from the boy’s ear.

  “Ah. Our simian friend swinging from branch to branch. Don’t laugh, you men. Well. Are you house-trained? Reliable? Brilliant intellect?”

  Quivering with distaste
, Mr Pedigree looked round the room. It was his custom and entertainment to arrange the boys in order of beauty so that the most beautiful occupied the front row. There was no doubt at all in his mind as to where the new boy should go. At the back of the room on his right, a tall cupboard left enough space for a desk that would be partly concealed by it. The cupboard could not be shifted flush against the wall without blocking a window.

  “Brown, you exquisite creature, I shall want you out of there. You can sit in Barlow’s place. Yes, I know he’ll be back; and then we shall have to do some more arranging, shan’t we? Anyway Brown, you’re an imp, aren’t you? I know what you get up to at the back there when you think I can’t see you. Stop laughing, you men. I won’t have you laughing. Now then, what’s your name, Wandgrave. Can you keep order, mm? Go and sit in that corner and just keep quiet and tell me if they don’t behave, mm? Go along!”

  He waited, grinning with determined cheerfulness until the boy was seated and partly out of sight. Mr Pedigree found that he could divide the boy by the line of the cupboard so that only the more-or-less undamaged side of his face was visible. He sighed with relief. Such things were important.

  “All right everybody. Just get on. Show him what we’re doing, Jones.”

  He relaxed, dallying now with his agreeable game, for Matty’s unexpected arrival gave him an excuse for another round of it.

  “Pascoe.”

  “Sir?”

  There was no denying that Pascoe was losing what had never been a very high degree of attractiveness. Mr Pedigree wondered in passing what he had ever seen in the boy. It was fortunate the affair had gone very little way.

  “Pascoe, dear friend, I wonder if you would mind changing places now with Jameson so that when Barlow comes back—you don’t mind being just a little further from the seat of judgement? Now, what about you, Henderson. Eh?”

  Henderson was in the middle of the front row. He was a child of bland and lyric beauty.

  “You don’t mind being close to the seat of judgement, do you, Henderson?”

  Henderson looked up, smiling, proudly and adoringly. His star was in Mr Pedigree’s ascendant. Moved inexpressibly, Mr Pedigree came out of his desk and stood by Henderson, his fingers in the boy’s hair.

  “Ghastly, dear friend, when did you last wash all this yellow stuff, eh?”

  Henderson looked up, still smiling and secure, understanding that the question was not a question, but communication, brightness, glory. Mr Pedigree dropped his hand and squeezed the boy’s shoulder, then went back to his desk. To his surprise the boy behind the cupboard had his hand up.

  “What is it? What is it?”

  “Sir. That boy there. He passed a note to him, sir. That’s not allowed is it sir?”

  For a while Mr Pedigree was too astonished to answer. Even the rest of the class were silent until the enormity of what they had heard penetrated to them. Then a faint, increasing booing sound began to rise.

  “Stop it you men. Now I said stop it. You, what’s your name. You must have come straight out of a howling wilderness. We have found a cop!”

  “Sir you said—”

  “Never mind what I said, you literal creature! My goodness what a treasure we’ve come across!”

  Matty’s mouth had opened and stayed open.

  It was odd indeed after that, that Matty should adopt Mr Pedigree. It was a sign of the poverty of his acquaintance that he should begin to dog the man and irritate him, since attention from Matty was the last thing he wanted. In fact, Mr Pedigree was on the slope of his rising curve and had begun to recognize where he was in a way that had not been apparent to him in the long distant days of the choir school. He knew now that points on the curve signalled themselves precisely. As long as he admired beauty in the classroom, no matter how overt his gestures of affection, everything was safe and in order. But there came a point where he began—had to begin—to help boys with their prep in his own room, forbidden as it was, dangerous and delirious; and there again the gestures would be innocent for a time—

  Just now, in the last month of this term, Henderson had been elevated by nature herself to that pre-eminent beauty. Mr Pedigree himself found it strange that there was such a constant supply of that beauty available, and coming up year after year. The month was strange both for Mr Pedigree and Matty, who dogged him with absolute simplicity. His world was so small and the man was so large. He could not conceive of a whole relationship being based on a joke. He was Mr Pedigree’s treasure. Mr Pedigree had said so. Just as some boys spent years in hospital and some did not, so he saw that some boys did their bounden duty and reported on their fellows and some did not, even though the result was desperate unpopularity.

  Matty’s fellows might have forgiven or forgotten his appearance. But his literal-mindedness, high-mindedness and ignorance of the code ensured that he became an outcast. But baldy Windup yearned for friendship, for he did not only dog Mr Pedigree. He dogged the boy Henderson too. The boy would jeer and Mr Pedigree would—

  “Not now, Wheelwright, not now!”

  Quite suddenly Henderson’s visits to Mr Pedigree’s room became more frequent and unconcealed and the language in which Mr Pedigree addressed the class became more extravagant. It was the top of the curve. He spent most of one lesson in a digression, a lecture on bad habits. There were very, very many of them and they were difficult to avoid. In fact—and they would find this out as they grew older—some of them were impossible to avoid. It was important however to distinguish between those habits which were thought to be bad and those which were actually bad. Why, in ancient Greece women were thought to be inferior creatures, now don’t laugh you men, I know what you’re thinking, you nasty lot, and love reached its highest expression between men and between men and boys. Sometimes a man would find himself thinking more and more about some handsome little fellow. Suppose for example, the man was a great athlete, as it might be nowadays, a cricketer, a test player—

  The handsome little fellows waited to find out what the moral of this discourse was and how it related to bad habits but they never did. Mr Pedigree’s voice trailed off and the whole thing did not so much end as die, with Mr Pedigree looking lost and puzzled.

  People find it remarkable when they discover how little one man knows about another. Equally, at the very moment when people are most certain that their actions and thoughts are most hidden in darkness, they often find out to their astonishment and grief how they have been performing in the bright light of day and before an audience. Sometimes the discovery is a blinding and destroying shock. Sometimes it is gentle.

  The headmaster asked to see the report books of some boys in Mr Pedigree’s class. They sat at a table in the headmaster’s study with the green filing-cabinets at their back. Mr Pedigree talked volubly about Blake and Barlow, Crosby and Green and Halliday. The headmaster nodded and turned the reports over.

  “I see you haven’t brought Henderson’s along.”

  Mr Pedigree lapsed into frozen silence.

  “You know, Pedigree, it’s most unwise.”

  “What’s unwise? What’s unwise?”

  “Some of us have peculiar difficulties.”

  “Difficulties?”

  “So don’t give these private lessons in your room. If you want to have boys in your room—”

  “Oh but the boy’s welfare!”

  “There’s a rule against it, you know. There have been—rumours.”

  “Other boys—”

  “I don’t know how you intend me to take that. But try not to be so—exclusive.”

  Pedigree went quickly, with heat round his ears. He could see clearly how deep the plot was; for as the graph of his cyclic life rose towards its peak he would suspect all men of all things. The headmaster, thought Pedigree—and was half-aware of his own folly—is after Henderson himself! So he set about devising a scheme by which he could circumvent any attempt on the part of the headmaster to get rid of him. He saw clearly that the best thing was a cover
story or camouflage. As he wondered and wondered what to do, he first rejected a step as impossible, then as improbable, then as quite dreadful—and at last saw it was a step he would have to take, though the graph was not falling.

  He braced himself. When his class was settled he went round them boy by boy; but this time, beginning with awful distaste at the back. Deliberately he went to the corner where Matty was half-hidden by the cupboard. Matty smiled up at him lopsidedly; and with a positive writhe of anguish, Pedigree gave a grin into the space above the boy’s head.

  “Oh my goodness me! That’s not a map of the Roman Empire my young friend! That’s a picture of a black cat in a coal cellar in the dark. Here, Jameson, let me have your map. Now do you see Matty Windrap? Oh God. Look I can’t spend time loitering here. I’m not taking prep this evening, so instead of going there you just bring your book and your atlas and the rest of it to my room. You know where that is don’t you? Don’t laugh you men! And if you do particularly well there might be a sticky bun or a slice of cake—oh God—”

  Matty’s good side shone upwards like the sun. Pedigree glanced down into his face. He clenched his fist and struck the boy lightly on the shoulder. Then he hurried to the front of the classroom as if he were looking for fresh air.

  “Henderson, fair one. I shan’t be able to take you for a lesson this evening. But it’s not necessary is it?”

  “Sir?”

  “Come here and show me your book.”

  “Sir.”

  “Now there! You see?”

  “Sir—aren’t there going to be any more lessons upstairs, sir?”

  Anxiously Mr Pedigree looked into the boy’s face, where now the underlip stuck out.

  “Oh God. Look, Ghastly. Listen—”

  He put his fingers in the boy’s hair and drew his head nearer.

  “Ghastly, my dear. The best of friends must part.”

  “But you said—”

  “Not now!”

  “You said!”

  “I tell you what, Ghastly. I shall be taking prep on Thursday in the hall. You come up to the desk with your book.”