Andrew picked it up and said, “I haven’t read this one. I thought it was the Phaedo for a minute, we did that at school. What’s it about?”
Laurie remembered in the nick of time to say, “Well, primarily, it’s about the laws of rhetoric.”
“Are you interested in rhetoric? If I were asked to choose the least likely person I could think of, it would be you.”
“Actually I suppose people read it most for the sample speeches.” Andrew waited expectantly. Laurie felt the held-in feeling in his chest easing off. “There are three, but the first is rather a dull one, just put up to be knocked down. Socrates recomposes it as he thinks it ought to be done. Then he decides it ought not to be done at all because it isn’t true. So he does another of his own on the same subject.”
“What subject?”
“Love.” Laurie skimmed as lightly as he could over the most treacherous word in the language. “The first speech sets out to prove that a lover who isn’t in love is preferable to one who is. Being less jealous, easier to live with, and generally more civilized.”
“It sounds,” said Andrew with the maddening intolerance of youth, “hardly worth stating the first time, let alone redoing it.”
“Well, maybe, but Socrates’ version is quite amusing. And, as a matter of fact, perfectly true. Only as the whole thing hangs on the definition of love, he’s able to turn it inside out in the refutation, which is the highlight of the piece. It—”
“Read it to me.”
“What? Oh, no. No, I—” It was a moment before he recovered the presence of mind to add, “It’s far too long.”
“Read as much as you can, then.” Andrew lay down on the grass. It could be seen that he was very tired. His voice had the edgy insistence one hears in a child’s who has sat up too long.
“No, I should spoil it.” It and much more, he thought. To keep Andrew quiet he went on, “It’s got the famous myth of the charioteer.”
“I don’t know it. Go on.”
“Well …” He paused. It had been part of his mind’s furniture for years, but he had never spoken of it to anyone before. “He likens the soul to a charioteer, driving two winged horses harnessed abreast.”
“Yes, don’t stop.”
“Each of the gods has a pair of divine white horses, but the soul only has one. The other” (he smiled to himself; he always remembered this part best) “is black and scruffy, with a thick neck, a flat face, hairy fetlocks, gray bloodshot eyes, and shaggy ears. He’s hard of hearing, thick-skinned, and given to bolting whenever he sees something he wants. So the two beasts rarely see eye to eye, but the charioteer has to keep them on the road together. The god driving his well-matched grays is ahead setting the pace; he drives up to a track which encircles the heavens, and is carried around with eternity as it spins, like—”
Andrew, interrupting, said, “ ‘Like a great ring of pure and endless light.’ ”
“Yes. Yes, that will be where Vaughan got it, I suppose.” Both found themselves with nothing to say. And now, thought Laurie, he will ask at any moment, “But what has all this to do with love?”
In fact, however, he said nothing, but picked up the book itself from the grass, where Laurie had forgotten it. Presently he said without turning around, “You’ve had this for quite a time, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I had it at school.”
“And you took it to France with you.”
“All too obviously, I’m afraid. I must get it rebound.”
“I should like to read it. Will you lend it me?”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll let you have it sometime. I’ll try and clean it first, or put on a paper cover or something. It’s really in too filthy a condition to pass around.”
Andrew said, his usually clear voice muffled by the position he was lying in, “You needn’t for me.”
Laurie knew that at this point he should not have allowed another silence to begin. The rustle of a rabbit in the wood echoed like the tread of cattle; the faint sound of a page turning seemed to go through his skin like a cutting edge.
After all it was Andrew who was the first to speak.
“Ralph Ross Lanyon.”
“What?” said Laurie stupidly.
“It’s the name that’s written in the book, before yours.”
“Yes, I know, what about it?”
“Nothing. I only thought, perhaps, it was a present from someone.”
Laurie reached for a cigarette. “What a romantic mind you have,” he said from behind his hands. “It came down to me from a chap who was leaving, that’s all.”
“I only meant,” said Andrew stiffly, “that if it’s a book you’d rather not lend, or anything, it doesn’t matter. I should quite understand.”
He coaxed the cigarette alight, carefully. “Just for the record, I’ve neither seen nor heard anything of Lanyon since the day he left; if I saw him again I probably wouldn’t know him, and it’s even less likely that he’d know me.” He broke off with a vague feeling that he had said more than enough. “Does that cover everything?”
“It should, shouldn’t it? A lot of people would just have told me to mind my own business. Don’t take any more notice of me.” He put the book down, and burrowed his head into his arm as if to sleep. Laurie sat waiting: longing wearily, yet dreading, to be released into loneliness by the coming of this little death. But Andrew’s breathing was quick and silent. He turned and looked up. “I wonder—are you very short of cigarettes, could you spare me one?”
“Sorry, I thought you didn’t smoke.”
“I don’t really. I just felt like it. If you’re sure you’ve enough.” He didn’t move back when he had taken it. “I haven’t a match; give me a light from yours.” He leaned up on his elbow; his tilted head caught a splinter of light from between the branches. One of the gold birch leaves had fallen in his hair.
Laurie drew on the cigarette; a bright ring ran swiftly up the paper. He watched it burn for a moment; turned and began to lean down; then took the cigarette quickly and handed it at arms’ length across. “Thanks,” said Andrew. He got his cigarette lighted, gave Laurie’s back to him, and turned away. Neither spoke; the faint curls of smoke looked blue against the shadows of the wood behind them.
After a few minutes Andrew stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I think I shall sleep here. It’s quieter than the hut. Do you mind?”
“No,” said Laurie. “I can’t think of any objection.”
“I shan’t oversleep, so don’t bother about me. Just go when you have to go. You won’t need to go yet, will you?”
“No. I shan’t be going yet.”
“Just forget about me. You looked so peaceful before I came disturbing you. Now you can get on with your book as if I weren’t here.”
In the lane just outside the hospital gate, Laurie came to a standstill. He had thought that a rest would set the knee right, but on the way back it had started at once, and now he had to admit it was worse than it had ever been; it felt as if it had been transfixed with a hot screw. He stood, a little breathless, making up his mind to go on.
“Evening, Odell.” It was Major Ferguson, whose approach he hadn’t heard. He pulled himself together and saluted. “Good evening, sir.”
“What was the trouble just now, Odell? Not still getting pain with that knee, are you?”
“A bit, sir. Only when I walk on it.”
“Well, that’s what it’s for, after all, isn’t it? Eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What treatment are we giving you?”
“I usually have A.P.C. if it gets bad, sir.”
“I said treatment, not palliatives. God knows why these things don’t get reported to me. Well, we’d better fix you up with some physiotherapy, I think. I’ll see about it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He had the dimmest idea of what physiotherapy was, feeling sure only that it would take place when he could have been seeing Andrew. But when he met Nurse Adrian in the covered way she said, “I was hoping they’d do something like that. You’ll find it’s well worth it, even if it does hold up your discharge a little.” Then he realized his luck for the first time, and couldn’t remember any more of the interview, except for a vague feeling that his happiness had seemed to communicate itself to her. He wondered sometimes why he didn’t overhear the other men saying how pretty she was. She was a little coltish, perhaps, and certainly nothing like the star of the Technicolor musical; and he supposed he wasn’t much of a judge.