Toby stood for a while near the door of the visitors’ chapel, listening. He had been told that, between the hours, day and night, there was always a nun at prayer in the main chapel. He could hear nothing. He advanced on tiptoe towards the grille and stopped at the low communion rail which was about three feet in front of it. There was something very odd about being placed sideways on to the altar and not being able to see the body of the chapel which faced the altar. He did not venture to step inside the communion rail; but, looking nervously behind him, he edged up as far as he could toward the left wall of the chapel, and peered through the bars from there. He could see very little more of what lay beyond: only the altar steps, some coloured tiling on the floor, and a further piece of the opposite wall. The nave remained relentlessly hidden.
Looking through into the greater darkness Toby was suddenly reminded of the obscurity of the lake, where the world was seen again in different colours; and he was taken with a profound desire to pass through the grille. When he had had this thought he was immediately shocked at it and rather frightened. Here he stood, and in a way, nothing prevented him from opening the little gate in the grille and walking through into the chapel and standing there, just for a moment perhaps, looking down the nave. He wondered what he would see. A great expanse of empty benches and a solitary nun, perhaps, kneeling somewhere near the back, regarding him sombrely; or, and the thought made his flesh creep, perhaps the entire community was in there at this moment, a few yards from him, sitting in complete silence. In a way nothing prevented him from going through. In a way it was something entirely impossible, and he could not even bring himself to step over the rail.
He retired quickly to the back of the visitors’chapel, feeling shame at the idea of being caught peering, and sat down. He felt irritated and confused and upset. Yesterday he had felt shock and a sort of horror, and then that feverish need to talk to Michael. But at least yesterday he had felt detached, yesterday he had been a spectator. Today he felt involved. He had suffered violence and then somehow been made privy to it; he was no longer a victim but an accomplice. He realized that in a way he was being unfair to Michael. What Michael had said yesterday had been perfectly sensible and cool; and after that very brief conversation in the alley they had walked back to the house, talking with careful casual-ness about other matters. But what lingered chiefly in Toby’s mind was the way in which Michael had seized his hand, and the long moment when they had stood with their hands tightly clasped. If only it hadn’t been for that; for the fact was that Toby knew that he himself had been just as anxious for the contact as Michael had been. He too had been brimming over with emotion. In spite of the words, it had been like a scene between lovers; and looking back, it seemed as if the words were merely straw, flying upward to destruction in the fierce heat of the encounter. Toby felt himself caught in something messy and emotional and he hated it.
He felt however no dislike for Michael. Even the sense of physical disgust with which the whole business filled him remained turned against himself. What Michael had done was to Toby a tremendous revelation. His whole conception of human existence was become in a moment immensely more complex and even in a brief space had made progress. Toby was already less inclined to label Michael or to. circumscribe what he was. He was filled rather with an immense curiosity. Whatever could it be like to be an almost priestlike figure and yet go round kissing boys? He wondered if, in spite of what he had said, Michael did this often? Perhaps he just had sudden irresistible inclinations of this sort. Did he suffer torments of remorse? The sense which Toby had had of the agreeableness of knowing the sordid side of so venerated a person was with him still. For all his distaste for the situation he was sensible of a sort of pleasure in having gained power over Michaeclass="underline" power which in his mind he scarcely distinguished from an instinct to protect. He found himself dwelling with tenderness upon the idea of Michael’s frailties.
Toby was not in the habit of sitting and brooding. Usually, he was active, practical, and without a care in the world. With the simplicity which goes with a certain sort of excellent up-bringing he had regarded himself as not yet grown up. Men had never troubled him nor women neither. “Falling in love” he regarded as something reserved for the future, for that, it still seemed to him, fairly remote future in which he would become acquainted with the other sex. It was a shock to him now to find how rapidly his vision of the world had altered. He felt an extreme reluctance to work. He wanted most of all to do as he was doing now, to sit and think, remembering endlessly things that had been said and done and conjuring up continually in his mind the pale golden head and narrow worried hawk-like face of his friend. Hé wondered with alarm if just this was falling in love.
Toby was far from the sophistication of holding that we all participate in both sexes. He believed that one loved either men or women, and if one was unfortunate enough to develop homosexual tastes one would never be able to live a normal life thereafter. This thought filled him with an insidious fear. Michael had told him not to exaggerate the importance of what had happened; but what had happened had happened to him and was still going on happening, and he had as little control over it as over the progress of digestion. He wondered, and the thought, after last night, had more substance, whether he was a natural homosexual.
Was he attracted by women? The fact that he had not so far been had bothered Toby, till this moment, not a whit. Now it worried him and he began to want to be immediately reassured. Toby had one brother, much younger than himself, and no sisters. He had scarcely met any girls of his own age. Images he had none to conjure up to test his inclinations. He pondered for a while rather generally upon the conception of Woman. A shapely yet maternal being arose before him. Shyly he began to unclothe her. And as he contemplated the vision, slyly observing his own reactions, he gradually became aware that this immense incarnation of femininity was taking on the features of Dora Greenfield.
Toby was both surprised and gratified at this development. He had not been especially conscious of finding Dora attractive, but now that he positively searched his mind, encouraging declarations which he would before have regarded as improper, it seemed to him that he had for some time been sensitive to her charms. She had, certainly, a magnificent head, with those flat tongues of golden brown hair shaping it, like something in an Italian picture; and for the rest, she was well rounded, buxom you might say. Toby’s imagination shied for a while about the more expansive image of Dora. But most of all he saw her face, with its full mouth and gentle features and that maternal and encouraging look in the eye. Whereas from the colder image of Catherine, for all its sweetness, Toby’s thoughts fled as from the figure of Artemis, he found in his memories of Dora’s mien and gestures a warm encouragement and an invitation.
These imaginings were interrupted by the sound of movement within the nuns’ chapel. Soft footsteps were heard and the frou-frou of heavy skirts. Toby jumped up in alarm. It must be time for sext. He stood listening to the footsteps and the suggestive rustling. They continued for some time; and then there was a subsiding sound as of a great bird settling into its nest. Silence followed, and was ended at last by a single soprano voice breaking into a plain song chant. Toby was shaken. There was something monstrous, provocative almost, in the invisible and impregnable closeness to him of so many women. The taboo quality of the enclosure could no longer be taken for granted – he found it now irritating, tantalizing, exciting. The nun who was chanting had a very thin true voice, not unlike Catherine’s. The chant continued until the hideous purity and austerity of the song became intolerable to him. He turned and stumbled out of the chapel.