Laurie waited and then said, “He couldn’t take it, you mean?”
“Well, no. Just the opposite. If you don’t know it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh,” said Laurie. He thought how lightly he would have read all this, stripped of its human reality, in a psychological handbook.
“I think I just stood there and looked at him. Of course one sees if he was like that he couldn’t help himself, poor swine. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d ever expected to find myself mixed up in, that’s all. I’d have liked to see him dead, so long as I hadn’t got to touch him. I suppose he saw it. It may be he went to Jeepers out of revenge, but I don’t think so. I think he was scared, and it made him a bit hysterical. He told it reversing the point of the final episode, if you see what I mean. I didn’t see very much future in arguing about it.”
“God, how little we all knew. How awful for you.”
“For him too,” said Ralph, “I suppose.” For a minute or two he didn’t speak, but tapped with his fingers on the top of the car door, a broken rhythm like Morse. “The thing is, sooner or later one has to think it out, one can’t just leave it there. I realized afterwards, some time afterwards, a perfectly normal person wouldn’t have been so angry. He was sick, after all. But that, really, was it. That was what I had against him. I’d been trying to work up what I was into a kind of religion. I thought I could make out that way. He made me see it as just a part of what he was.” His hand moved absently over the dashboard; suddenly the narrowed pencil of the masked headlamps shone out into the empty air of the valley, tracing paths of pale vapor in which midges danced like sparks. He swore under his breath and switched them off.
“Well, we have to face that sooner or later, of course.” Now that the sudden light had gone it could be felt that the neutrality of twilight was over; it was almost dark. There was a moment of extreme quiet in which the distant shunting of a train, a car on the road behind them, the chirr of a night bird, were like differently colored silences. Ralph said, with a basic simplicity, “You see, Spud, don’t you? That was why.”
“Yes,” said Laurie, “of course I see.” He was too much moved to narrow his thoughts down to any one point of the story. He strained for better, more expressive words, which would not come. It was at this moment that the approaching car turned in and parked beside them. Inside it girls’ voices were already giving provocative twitters of protest; whispers of giggling reproof pointed out that strangers were present. Ralph switched on the engine and, with carefully managed ease, put in the gear.
They drove for some time in silence. Soon they got down into traffic again; and it was then that he became aware of Ralph’s increasing irritability. The small misdoings of other drivers seemed to infuriate him; after keeping up for some miles a profane running commentary, he started to address the offenders direct. Laurie put it down to the gears at first, till it occurred to him that Ralph hadn’t had a drink yet this evening. He sat quiet, to avoid attracting the lightning, till a youth on a bicycle wobbled across in front of the car. Ralph pulled up and stayed to deliver a reprimand. For a moment it was funny to see the youth clinging paralyzed to the hedge like a monkey fascinated by a python; but when it was over he could see that Ralph was depressed and angry with himself, so at the next pub they passed he said, “What about stopping for a quick one?”
“No,” said Ralph shortly. “Won’t be time.” He accelerated. About a quarter of a mile on, he said quite pleasantly, “If we’re too late, everything fit to eat will be off.”
In one of their silent pauses Laurie found himself wishing it were possible, without telling Andrew too much, to get a sensible idea of Ralph into his head. It was the first time he had ever thought of Andrew in terms of criticism, even such gentle criticism as this.
“Usually the food’s a bit less filthy here than anywhere.” The hotel Ralph stopped at was Edwardian, shabby, clean, and restful. To Laurie’s relief, after the third double Ralph made a move to the dining room. By that time he had started to talk again.
“I must say, Spud, you’re remarkably well balanced for the offspring of divorce. Quite often being queer is the least of it.”
“Well, my mother’s pretty well balanced,” Laurie began. Then it all came back to him. Ralph looked at his face and said gently, “Come on, Spud.” With an awkwardness gradually superseded by relief, Laurie brought it out.
Ralph didn’t urge him to see the best in Mr. Straike. He sounded, Ralph said, a bloody-minded old so-and-so. Rather like the first captain he had served under, he added almost as an afterthought. He was an old so-and-so if you like; if he had ever come down off the bridge in a gale someone would undoubtedly have tipped him overboard. But one trip he had taken his old woman along, and she seemed to think he was God’s gift, it oozed out all over her. You couldn’t account for women.
Laurie found this rough comfort, but did his best not to show it. “I expect it’ll work out,” he said.
“Have I been unnecessarily brutal, Spud? I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know. I’m not much of an authority on family relationships. None of my girl friends went in for that sort of thing, either.” He looked at Laurie and laughed. “Come, now, Spuddy, let it go at a raised eyebrow. That stunned expression isn’t very flattering.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, but joking apart, you don’t want to have written off half the human race at your time of life. I don’t mean this unkindly, but perhaps you’re having the navel-cord cut in the nick of time. Look at it that way and don’t be too upset about it.”
There was an odd unexpected relief in this hard handling. “All the same, I doubt if mothers will ever need to lock their daughters up when they see me coming.”
“Oh, perhaps not, I didn’t mean that so much. It’s more an attitude of mind than anything. What I always feel—”
This opened a conversation that went on for most of the meal. Once or twice Ralph would have changed it, but Laurie kept it going, not for the sake of the advice, which he couldn’t feel would ever be important to him, but to make Ralph talk about himself. So it turned out, for after dismissing the soup and remarking that they seemed to have used shark’s tripes, he said, “I did two years of women, when I first went to sea.” He said it very much as sailors say they have done two years in tankers, or two years in sail.
“Did you?” said Laurie. “Why?”
“Oh, for almost every reason except the real one. I’d had rather a sickener of the other side. Once people know about you at sea, they want you to be too obliging. It’s not so good in peacetime starting lower deck with the wrong accent and so on. I didn’t want to give them anything on me. Besides, when I found I could if I gave my mind to it, I thought I might become naturalized, so to speak. Some people seem to take an inordinate pride in never having made the attempt, but I don’t see it myself. I decided I’d give it the two years, anyway.”
He broke off to attend to his food. Laurie saw that though he could use the left hand well enough, the padded fingers of the glove were clumsy and got in his way. It was impossible to guess how much he felt all this.
“Did it make any difference?” Laurie asked him.
“Well, yes, it did in a sense, of course. It’s bound to do something for one’s self-confidence, if nothing else. I think one year would have been enough. Funny thing, you know, it didn’t feel at all like going straight. More like trying to cultivate some fashionable vice that never quite becomes a habit. I served out the contract, though. No, let’s be honest, I broke out a week short of the time. I happened to meet someone and I’d have been at sea a week later. All I can remember thinking is ‘Thank the Lord, back to normal at last.’ Well, there it is. Some people make a go of it. I don’t think it was a complete waste of time, though; it stops one getting too parochial. Now and again I’ve even had a woman since; I’ve met one who reminded me of one of the early ones, or something. I don’t know why, really. Vanity very likely. You look thoughtful, Spud. Do I sound very unfeeling?”