There was a short spell of hot weather and we began to frequent the local swimming-pool when we came out of work. It was an agreeable place, with a high entrance fee imposed to keep out the lower orders. Young men with rich fathers in the boot-and-shoe trade brought their girls in M.G. sports cars: we came on our bicycles. There were half a dozen showy young divers, and at least a couple of young men who could swim more than two lengths in very fast free style. The girls wore bathing-costumes made of what they called the latest thing in two-way stretch. You could not have wished for more in the way of provincial chic.
I usually arrived first, having a greater passion than the others for swimming and lying in the sun. On the evening when the course of our lives perceptibly took a new turn I had arranged to be joined by Myrtle and Tom. While I sat waiting for them I enjoyed the scene.
The owners of the pool had clearly had in view, when choosing their design, something colourful. They had got what they wanted. The bath, through which constantly flowed heavily chlorinated water, was lined with glittering cobalt-blue tiles, which gave the water a quite unearthly look. The white surface of new concrete changing-sheds glared brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight, and against it were lined deckchairs made with orange and green striped canvas. There were two plots of grass, from the centres of which sprang fountains of pink rambler roses.
Against this background, to my surprise, appeared Steve. When he was stripped Steve looked much more bony and boyish than when he was dressed: he hunched his shoulders and walked flat-footedly. He tended to hang about on the edge of the bath, though he was a fair swimmer, with his arms crossed over his chest, apparently shivering. He saw me, and came and sat on the grass beside me.
‘Where’s Tom?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
There was a peculiar silence, to which my contribution was more surprise.
‘I suppose you know he’s coming, Steve?’
‘Is he?’ Steve turned quickly in agitation. ‘Honestly, Joe, I didn’t know. What shall I do?’ Steve’s face assumed an expression of frantic alarm. ‘What shall I do? I’ve arranged to meet a girl here!’
‘Really!’ I said, not committing myself immediately to unqualified belief.
‘What shall I do?’
‘I don’t know, Steve.’ Then I said helpfully: ‘Perhaps love will find a way.’
‘It couldn’t get past Tom!’ Steve hunched his shoulders. ‘Honestly, Joe, it wouldn’t stand a chance.’
‘Oh!’
‘This is terrible, Joe. Honestly, you don’t understand.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t know Tom was coming?’ Somehow I could not help feeling that in spite of his frantic alarm Steve was looking forward to a scene with Tom.
‘Of course not. He’ll go mad when he finds out.’
‘He’ll get over it.’
Steve gave me a look that was cold and cross. ‘What will happen to me in the meantime?’ he asked.
That question I was unable to answer. I suggested that we should go and swim, but Steve shook his head.
‘I want to think,’ he said. So he thought for a while. ‘I want to talk.’
‘What about?’
Steve turned to look at me. ‘I really did like it, Joe …’
‘What?’ I had no idea what he meant.
‘Taking this girl out, of course. I took her to the pictures last night. You may think it sounds silly, Joe, but it wasn’t! I liked it. It made me feel I was doing something that was real and true. It made me feel like other boys. Other boys take their girls to the pictures.’
‘What film did you see?’
Steve’s air of passionate sincerity vanished: he looked nettled.
‘We went to the Odeon. It was a terrible film, I know. But she wanted to see it.’
‘That’s nothing, in the course of love, Steve. You must be prepared for greater sacrifices than that.’
‘But it really was terrible. It was excruciating. All about a sheep-dog.’
‘As you grow older, Steve, you’ll realize that love is inseparable from suffering,’ I said. ‘Myrtle once made me go to Stratford-on-Avon to see A Comedy of Errors.’
‘No!’
‘If girls aren’t ignorant, they’re cultured,’ I said. ‘You can’t avoid suffering.’
Steve spread out his towel over the grass and lay down on his stomach.
‘Tell me about your girl,’ I said.
‘There’s not very much to tell. I met her here last week. She’s only a schoolgirl. Quite pretty, though. A bit silly, but I don’t mind that. It makes me feel older than her, and I like that.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Fifteen. Nearly sixteen.’
‘That’s a bit young.’
‘That’s what I want, Joe. It’s innocent, and I want to keep it innocent.’
‘If she’s only fifteen you’re likely to succeed for a good many years.’
‘Years!’ said Steve, obviously presented with a new concept. He pondered it with chagrin. ‘Won’t it be terribly monotonous?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘But it won’t have the ups and downs of the other state.’
Steve was silent for a while.
‘I did try to kiss her on the way home,’ he said. ‘Actually I didn’t particularly want to. But I thought she’d expect it. One has to be conventional.’
‘That seemed to be the aim.’
Steve turned his head up to see how I was taking it. ‘She let me kiss her on the cheek.’
I maintained a serious expression. ‘And then?’
A glint came into the corners of his eyes. ‘She said: “Aren’t I pretty!” and touched her hair.’
‘But Steve!’ I burst out: ‘That wouldn’t do for you at all!’ I knew Tom constantly told him he was Adonis and this was not a whit too much or too often.
‘It made a change,’ said Steve, grinning, ‘but not a nice one.’
Some people who were camped a little way off turned to listen to us. We stopped talking. Steve laid his face on the ground. I looked at the crowd – and saw Tom coming, bearing down like a battleship on Steve.
I greeted Tom, who spread out his towel and sat down beside us. Steve kept his face on the turf, and Tom glared at him. Steve was deliberately behaving badly. Thinking of Myrtle I asked Tom what time it was. He looked at his watch and told me. Immediately Steve heard the time he roused himself and stood up. He must have been due for his rendezvous.
‘Steve, where are you going?’
‘To get a handkerchief out of my locker.’
‘What for?’
‘I need it.’
‘I’ve got a spare one.’
‘I want my own.’
With bulging eyes Tom was watching Steve, whose errand sounded most improbable. Steve was furtively looking round at the crowd.
Tom shrugged his shoulders, and Steve shambled away, clearly searching for his schoolgirl. I glanced at Tom. It was the signal for him to plunge immediately into intimate conversation about Steve. In a moment he was asking me questions – Where was Steve going? What was he doing? How long had he been there? Had he been with me all the time? What had we been talking about?
I answered the questions as truthfully as I could without making matters worse. My heart sank as I followed the boring routine of jealousy in someone else.
‘I don’t know, Tom,’ I found myself saying. ‘How can I know?’ I paused. ‘And even if I did know it wouldn’t make you any more satisfied if I told you.’
‘I should want to know all the same,’ Tom said, rebuking me.
I shrugged my shoulders. I knew he was in no mood for seeing Steve’s latest manœuvres in their true ridiculous light.
‘You forget that I’m in love,’ said Tom.
‘At least you’re jealous,’ said I.
‘The two things don’t necessarily mean the same thing,’ said Tom, ‘as you ought to know, Joe.’ Tom could never resist the satisfaction of teaching his grandmother to suck eggs.
‘One can be jealous without being in love,’ he went on; ‘but one can’t be in love without being jealous.’
He gave me a sidelong glance, so I presumed he was referring to me. I had been too ashamed of my own jealousy to confide in him: consequently he found my display of that emotion suspiciously inadequate.
We were silent for a while.
Then Tom said, with great feeling: ‘I’m afraid this is beginning to get me down, Joe.’
My sympathy quickened. ‘Can’t you begin to – I don’t know – pull out?’
‘Of course not.’
I felt inclined to shrug my shoulders. However, I simply said: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve never been able to withdraw,’ said Tom, with some truth. ‘I have to go on.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid this time it may drive me mad.’
‘That appears to be what Steve’s aiming at.’
‘Not at all, Joe. He can’t help it,’ said Tom.
‘Oh.’
‘That’s what makes it so moving. That’s why he needs me.’
Thinking of cash I said: ‘He certainly needs you, Tom.’
‘I don’t know what he would do without me.’
‘He’d lead a life of vastly restricted enterprise.’
Tom indicated that my remark showed lack of understanding.
‘I think he’s devoted to me.’
‘He is, Tom.’
‘If only I could feel sure of him.’ Tom shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble with love, Joe. If only one could feel sure … If only I could be sure this was going to last even another year.’
For the moment I forgot, just as Tom did, that he was supposed to be leaving the country in another three weeks. He was speaking from his heart, and I was moved. I believed the kind of love he felt for Steve could rouse as deep feeling, could cause as sudden happiness and as sharp anguish, as any other kind. But I had no faith in its lasting: I could no more believe it would last than I could believe water would flow uphill.
‘But it may last six months,’ said Tom, and I swear that his tone was that of a man who is announcing a not unsatisfactory compromise.
Tom was a powerful swimmer: he had a good layer of fat which kept him afloat, and strong muscles well-suited for propulsion. We dived into the bright blue waves, and came up blinking chlorinated water out of our eyes. Tom followed his usual practice of setting out to swim many consecutive lengths at a slow, steady pace. I swam beside him for a while and then changed my mind. I climbed out of the bath and looked round.
I was not the only person who knew Tom’s usual practice. Steve, confident that Tom’s head would be under water for most of the next fifteen minutes, was standing in full view of everybody present conversing gaily with two schoolgirls.
I did not know what to do. Intervention of any kind seemed to me fatal. I could only stand watching, while drops of water trickled down from my hair on to my shoulders, hoping for the best.
Now hoping for the best is one of the most feeble of human activities, and I ought to have known better: especially as I knew that one of the most obvious characteristics of showy divers is entire disregard for the comfort of swimmers. I glanced back and forth, from Steve and his lively, leggy, young girls to Tom’s carroty head thrusting steadfastly across the bath. And I was just in time to see two boys in a double dive enter the water a yard ahead of Tom. He was immediately brought to a standstill bouncing angrily in the wash. He spat water from his mouth, and rubbed it out of his eyes; and looked all round. The first thing he saw was Steve.
In half a dozen strokes Tom was at the side of the bath, climbing out, and marching up to Steve. I saw the startled look on Steve’s face as Tom tapped him on the shoulder. There was a brief exchange of words, and then they both came away together, leaving the young girls looking at each other speechlessly. Tom strode in front with the sunlight glistening in the fuzz of red hair on his chest: Steve reluctantly brought up the rear.
I went to collect my towel, and we all fetched up simultaneously at the same spot. Tom’s eyes looked startling, the irises greener with rage and the whites bloodshot with chlorine.
‘You’re driving me mad, Steve!’ he said, hurriedly wiping his face. His passionate tone was somewhat muffled by the towel.
Steve said nothing, and began ineffectually to dry the inside of his leg, where the water was dripping from his trunks.
‘Do you hear?’ said Tom. ‘You’re driving me mad.’
‘What?’ said Steve. ‘I can’t hear because of your towel.’
‘You’re driving me mad!’
Steve said sulkily: ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Don’t be silly, Tom.’
I thought it was time to remove myself, although I knew that Tom had no objection to my presence during his domestic rows – in fact I suspected that he rather liked me to be there, adding to the drama.
I turned away and began to dry myself. I heard Steve say:
‘Here’s Myrtle.’
It was a great relief. I saw Myrtle sauntering towards us, looking fresh and bright.
‘You do look funny, all standing like that, drying yourselves. Like a picture by Duncan Grant.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Only his young men weren’t wearing …’ Her voice faded out, suggestively.
‘Myrtle, you’ve not changed your dress,’ said Tom, peremptorily. ‘Aren’t you going to bathe?’
I thought he was trying to get rid of her.
‘No, I don’t think I will,’ said Myrtle and sat down on the grass. I sat down beside her. She did not often swim: I thought she was shy of appearing in a bathing-costume because she was so slender and small-breasted. And of course she always felt cold. ‘I don’t think I can.’
I glanced at her. She looked at me with round, apologetic eyes: ‘I’m sorry, darling. I can’t stay and go home with you. I want to go somewhere later. Do you mind?’
It was my turn to be alarmed and irritated. ‘Not at all,’ I said.
There was a pause. Myrtle was watching Tom and Steve. I was thinking. It reminded me of other occasions when she had behaved like this. My mind went back over many events during the past year, and suddenly I saw their pattern. Provocation, leading to an outburst, leading to reconciliation – and then the cycle all over again. We were just entering the first round once more.
‘You sound cross,’ she said.
‘I’m not cross at all.’
Tom sat down on his towel beside her, with his back to Steve. He glanced at me, and said to Myrtle:
‘Joe, saying he’s not cross, has a wonderfully unconvincing sound.’
‘I know.’ Myrtle smoothed her dress over her knees. ‘He’s always cross. He’s always cross with me.’
Tom’s anger with Steve had faded or else he was concealing it well. He smirked warmly at Myrtle.
‘These introverts,’ he said to her.
Myrtle shook her head. ‘I suppose I must be an extravert.’
‘You are, my dear,’ said Tom.
Myrtle gave him a sad-eyed, appealing look.
‘You’re like me.’ Tom returned her look. ‘That’s why we understand each other so well.’
Myrtle did not reply.
‘That’s why you’d find me so much easier to live with.’ He now turned all his attention upon her, as if neither Steve nor I were there. ‘You like to feel relaxed, don’t you? You like to do things when you want to do them – when you feel like it. When the spirit moves you, my dear. Not when Joe does …’
Myrtle looked thoughtful. I cannot say I was pleased. I felt like saying: ‘That’s a bit thick’, or ‘Come off it, Tom’.
‘We’re easy persons to live with,’ Tom went on. ‘In fact I think we above all are the easiest. We go’ – he paused, before shamelessly introducing my own phrase for it – ‘by atmosphere.’ And he waved his hand gracefully through the air.
Myrtle put on the expression of a young girl listening to revelations. I may say that there was nothing false about it. Both she and Tom were in a sense carried away by what they were saying to each other. I may say also that I was not carried away, and what is more my high resolve to be patient and forbearing had wilted disastrously. The only thing that stopped me intervening now was a feeling that Tom might make a fool of himself. I was waiting.
Myrtle nodded her head.
‘Ah, Myrtle!’ Tom put his hand on hers. ‘There isn’t anything you couldn’t tell me, is there?’ He looked into her eyes.
Myrtle blinked. I could have sworn Tom had gone a step too far. I think she must have moved her hand, because Tom took his away.
There was a pause. Myrtle said, in a friendly tone of observation:
‘You’re getting fat, Tom.’
This was not at all what Tom wanted her to tell him. Tom looked down at his chest, with the tufts of red hair that I personally found repellent, and inflated it.
‘I like getting fat,’ he said.
‘Joe’s always exercising,’ Myrtle said. ‘So boring.’
‘It has its rewards,’ I said, in a cross, meaningful tone.
Tom shook his head at Myrtle. ‘He doesn’t understand us, does he?’ He stroked his diaphragm. ‘If you and I settled down together, Myrtle, you’d fall into my easy ways, just like that’ – he snapped his finger and thumb together – ‘and you’d get fat as well.’
This was not at all what Myrtle wanted Tom to tell her. I was pleased.
‘I couldn’t, Tom,’ she said, faintly despairing.
‘You would, my dear. And you’d love it. You wouldn’t feel so cold.’
I watched Myrtle’s expression with acute interest and pleasure. Naturally in the past I had not failed to tell her that she always felt cold because she had too thin a layer of subcutaneous fat. This explanation she regarded as mechanical and soulless in the highest degree. Myrtle knew that her feeling cold arose from distress of the heart. Tom had missed it. She sighed painfully.
Tom apparently did not notice. After all it must have been slightly distracting for him to have my eye fixed on him while he was making up to Myrtle, and to have Steve sulkily listening to him behind his back.
‘I shall always feel cold,’ Myrtle said.
‘Not if I were looking after you, my dear. I should know exactly how you were feeling all the time.’
Myrtle looked distinctly worried at this prospect. I sympathized with her.
‘And I should know’ – Tom gave a clever, shrewd glance at me – ‘how to give you good advice.’
It was one of Tom’s theses that I did not know how to handle Myrtle, particularly in the way of giving her good advice. He appeared not to know that Myrtle hated advice of all kinds, good, bad and indifferent.
‘Would you?’ she said, looking at him with a soft lack of enthusiasm.
Tom was silent. He stared at her with his confident, understanding expression. He appeared to be judging, out of love and sympathy, her present state of health.
‘You’re tired, my dear,’ he said, presumably finding shadows round her eyes.
‘I am.’
Tom glanced at me again, as much as to say: ‘This is how it ought to be done.’ He leaned towards her, and said:
‘You should go to bed earlier.’
If there was one thing Myrtle hated it was to be told she ought to go to bed earlier: in one simple move it negated her love of life, her profundity of soul and, more important still, her determination to do as she pleased.
Myrtle did not speak. She was feeling much too sad.
There is a dazzling reward for allowing your best friend to make advances to your young woman in your presence – the dazzling reward of seeing him put his foot in it.
In my opinion Tom had put his foot in it up to the knee, up to the hip.
At the same time I was a little surprised: my faith in extraverts was very strong. It did not occur to me that it was in very bad taste for Tom to talk to Myrtle in this way: I was concerned that he had not made a better job of it. I concluded that he must really be distracted by thoughts of the impression it must be making on Steve.
I glanced at Steve: it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His dark hair had dried in a soft mop that was falling over his eyes. He appeared to have lost interest in the schoolgirls. I think he was simply bored.
The sun was beginning to go down. Myrtle stirred uneasily, and Tom began to study the people round about.
‘Joe, look over there!’
I looked. Tom was pointing towards the bathing-sheds. Myrtle and Steve roused themselves.
It was Trevor and a girl. I have already remarked that Trevor was unusually small, that he was small-boned and altogether made on miniature lines. I now have to remark that Trevor’s girl was unusually big.
We were startled. They came forward together, Trevor stepping firmly and delicately, and his girl walking with powerful tread. He was talking animatedly, and smiling up at her. She was listening in a big, proprietorial way. She was wearing a perfectly plain, light green bathing-dress, and a white rubber cap concealed her hair: nothing for one instant distracted one’s attention from her physical form. It was a form not to be despised – far, far from it.
‘She looks like Genesis,’ said Tom, laughing.
‘My dear Tom, you don’t know anything about Genesis,’ said Myrtle; and then suddenly blushed.
‘The bulges!’ said Tom. ‘It’s stupendous.’
We watched them, fascinated, as they strolled away and ensconced themselves privately in the furthest corner of the compound.
‘After that,’ I said, ‘I think it’s time for us to go.’
Tom and Steve went indoors to dress, and I bade goodbye to Myrtle. I thought she must be going to see Haxby but I refused to ask her. She held out her cheek and I kissed it lightly. As she walked lazily away I felt sad and irritated.
I found Steve standing in the doorway of a cubicle, rubbing himself perfunctorily with a towel. I stood in the doorway of mine, next to him. Tom was having a shower.
‘Is that Trevor’s regular girl-friend?’ I said.
‘I think so.’
‘Was that the one he had in his car the night he was run in for jumping the traffic-lights?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sounded uninterested.
There was a pause.
‘Joe!’ Steve called.
There was an odd tone in his voice. I stepped out into the aisle to look at him. His face had a curiously worried expression. He stopped rubbing himself.
‘What’s the matter, Steve?’
‘Has Myrtle gone?’
‘Yes.’ I was puzzled by the question.
‘Of course, she’s gone. That’s silly of me … Listen, Joe, you know why Tom was making those advances to her? …’ His speech came in staccato bursts. ‘I know you won’t believe me, when I tell you this … Do you know Tom’s latest idea? He’s planning to marry Myrtle!’
I was astounded. I stared at Steve.
‘Incredible! He can’t! It’s ludicrous!’
It was the most incredible story Steve had ever told me, and for the first time I had not accused him of lying.
‘You’re not supposed to know, Joe.’
‘I should think not.’
‘He talked to Robert about it last week-end. That’s why he was in Oxford.’
It may seem absurd, but I was believing him.
Somebody came out of an adjacent cubicle, and we had to stop talking while he pushed past me. Looking down the aisle I saw Tom, with a towel round his waist, combing his hair in front of a mirror.
‘Please don’t tell him I told you, Joe.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Steve.’
‘But you mustn’t, Joe! Please don’t let him know you even suspect until he tells you. Otherwise I shall have terrible scenes.’
‘Look, Steve, you’d better –’
‘He’s coming! I can’t tell you any more.’ Steve backed into the cubicle and hastily flung his shirt over his head. His elbow stuck in the sleeve.
Tom came along.
‘Now Steve, hurry up!’ He glanced at Steve. ‘If you put on your shirt the way I showed you, Steve, you’d find it would slip straight on.’
I retired to my cubicle.
And after we parted I went to my house. I had something new to think about.
I was utterly astounded. Apparently nothing was too ridiculous for Tom to do. First of all he professed to be wrapped up in Steve; secondly he knew Myrtle was in love with me; thirdly he was due to leave the country in less than three weeks anyway. I could not make sense of it; but I knew only too well that a situation was not less likely to arise because I was unable to make sense of it. Few situations, especially those precipitated by Tom, made sense.
‘Steve must be lying,’ I said to myself that night when I went to bed.