The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ no attempt to pass judgement. She hurt me, but hurt seems intrinsic in human relationships, and the hurt was not her intention – in almost any situation, she was the injured party. As for her lies, they enriched and widened my narrow little world.

      There remains the sexual aspect of the matter. How much harm did she do to the boys she seduced, to the boys with whom she so genteelly and discreetly lay? Speaking for myself, I was delighted to be seduced, I thirsted for it, I went to great pains to be seduced. The same would undoubtedly be true of the odious Spaldine and Angel-Face Knowles. Virginia was no harpy, devouring all who came along her path. She only took in those who sought her out, and there was nothing perverted in her actual love-making.

      True, Spaldine was unbalanced by the affair; but I found some evidence, thinking back, that he was unbalanced long before Sister arrived at the school. He had run away from school once – one of only three boys who ever did so; that might seem like a sane act against the insanity of Branwells, but nobody who listened alertly to Spaldine would have regarded him as an apostle of reason.

      And there was Knowles. Did he develop a mother-fixation through his thrilling association with Virginia? He became quite well known in later life as a mountaineer, and I read with curious insight in an illustrated magazine article that his wife was ‘several years older’ than he. Was that an attempt to relive the Virginia experience? I believe it much more likely that he was that way inclined long before, or why would he have been drawn to Virginia in the first place?

      Virginia had powerful advantages over all the other girls I knew in those days, first among which was her experience. She was past the age of being embarrassed or of thinking of sex as a dirty joke. I was still at that age; so were my girl friends, like Esmeralda. Loving for Virginia, and consequently for her favoured boys, was a comforting and soothing thing. In her modest way she was expert; and expertise is really the butter on the bread of sex.

      It is curious at last to write on the subject of Virginia. She passed out of my life twenty-eight years ago. Yet she has never been entirely absent from my life, even when I have not thought of her for months, perhaps years. Now I am on the subject, I can hardly bear to come off it.

      I loved Virginia well. I did not love her for sex alone. Before I found out about all the lies, I believed her to be good, almost saintly. I can still see how and why I thought her so wonderful, although irrelevant things like snobbery clouded my judgement – for she must always have been no more prosperous than my family, and so the simple way she came into humble cafés with me was not the elegant piece of broad-mindedness I imagined it at the time, but the indifference of custom.

      So I come back to my first intuitions about her – that she had been deeply hurt. Something in her childhood had disrupted the entire course of her life … such a judgement is a cliché now, so much so that it is often patronizingly dismissed by the sophisticated. But the elementary perception that childhood injustices warp lives has done little to affect the general consensus of opinion, which acts on an older and more primitive principle, that an eye merits an eye, that sin deserves punishment. In many cases it is the punishment which fathers the sin.

      But I refuse to think of Virginia in these text-book terms. Something had severely hurt her in childhood – no doubt her nature was also prone to receive the hurt. As an adult, she would be classified now as paranoic, I suppose.

      In my youthful eyes she was none of these things; she was only herself, a woman in whose arms I had first tasted beauty and release, and through them discovered my better self.

      She left me standing by the Thames. It seemed to me that I would never be able to recover myself, that I had lost too much. After a little while it occurred to me to run after her, to seize her, to force her to believe me and tell the truth. But by then it was too late.

      For the rest of the day I wandered through the city. The painful deflections of life that all the towns of Europe were suffering found their echo in England’s capital. Barricades of sandbags were going up; the fountains were turned off in Trafalgar Square. A platoon of soldiers was marching towards Westminster; I stopped to watch them go by, looked at the set faces of the men, lacking individuality. Already children were being evacuated to the country. Their place was being taken by men in uniform.

      Idly, I looked about to see if by any chance I could see Nelson. But it was my father I wanted. Perhaps he would come down to London and persuade me to go back home with him …

      The nights were closing in. As the sun went down, blackouts went up.

      I had begun to relish my melancholy, but hunger overtook me. In those days I was always hungry. Half-lost, pretending I was wholly lost, I stopped on my way towards my favourite pie shop and drank a cup of tea at one of those wooden tea-stalls on wheels which stood in Leicester Square, enjoying being among the down-and-outs. Only when I had finished my pie-and-peas-did initiative return to me.

      Virginia had told me Josie’s surname. With luck, I would find it in the phone directory, and her number. I could ring Virginia; the next day was Sunday. We could meet again. Somehow I could persuade her that I was no part of the conspiracy she imagined to be building against her. I would make her see I was innocent.

      Back at Lou’s, I borrowed her directory, found Josie’s number, and put through the call. I knew Virginia hated talking on the telephone; perhaps she thought of it as a sinister instrument; but this was a case of necessity.

      Josie answered. I recognized her languid voice immediately.

      Without thought, I said, ‘I have a present for Virginia. Tell her I must meet her at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. She must meet me, because I am then leaving London almost immediately.’ I named a church I had noticed near her house; church seemed a good canny idea.

      It may have been the idea of a present; although I had never given her anything, I knew she would be childishly delighted by a present. As I was setting out to meet her that Sunday morning, I belatedly realized that I had indeed better take a present, just in case Virginia did turn up.

      I had nothing to give her. I had no money with which to buy her anything. For a moment, I contemplated stealing a piece of Lou’s costume jewellery. Then I remembered that I had in my wallet the little silver holder to contain books of postage stamps which my mother had given me on my fifteenth birthday. The intention had always been to have my name engraved on it, but fortunately this had not been done. Virginia could have it.

      Unthinkingly, I had chosen a time when a service was in progress in the church. Great sadness filled me as I stood by the wide deserted steps and looked across the faded prospect of Hyde Park, listening to the organ. In a way, I wanted this all to be a failure, wanted to lose Virginia, wanted everything to be spoilt and broken. That would be only just, and in tune with the dismal years that were past.

      When I saw her coming I forgot all that and knew I had at least some strength to fight.

      Such joy to see her again, worn and brave and small and half-nodding her greeting at me! I smiled and took her hand.

      ‘We’re late for the service, Virginia! Let’s have a walk in the park!’

      ‘Josie teased me and said it would do me good to go to church!’

      ‘Perhaps it might do us both good. We’ll try and make it next Sunday, shall we?’

      ‘Horry, I did not expect to see you again after what I told you yesterday. I can’t spare much time now, only I didn’t want you to be sad, so I came to see you.’

      ‘I’m not sad, Virginia. There’s something more I must say to you.’

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