Collected Stories

Torridge

Perhaps nobody ever did wonder what Torridge would be like as a man – or what Wiltshire or Mace-Hamilton or Arrowsmith would be like, come to that. Torridge at thirteen had a face with a pudding look, matching the sound of his name. He had small eyes and short hair like a mouse’s. Within the collar of his grey regulation shirt the knot of his House tie was formed with care, a maroon triangle of just the right shape and bulk. His black shoes were always shiny.

Torridge was unique in some way: perhaps only because he was beyond the pale and appeared, irritatingly, to be unaware of it. He wasn’t good at games and had difficulty in understanding what was being explained in the classroom. He would sit there frowning, half smiling, his head a little to one side. Occasionally he would ask some question that caused an outburst of groaning. His smile would increase then. He would glance around the classroom, not flustered or embarrassed in the least, seeming to be pleased that he had caused such a response. He was naïve to the point where it was hard to believe he wasn’t pretending, but his naïveté was real and was in time universally recognized as such. A master called Buller Yeats reserved his cruellest shafts of scorn for it, sighing whenever his eyes chanced to fall on Torridge, pretending to believe his name was Porridge.

Of the same age as Torridge, but similar in no other way, were Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith. All three of them were blond-haired and thin, with a common sharpness about their features. They wore, untidily, the same clothes as Torridge, their House ties knotted any old how, the laces in their scuffed shoes often tied in several places. They excelled at different games and were quick to sense what was what. Attractive boys, adults had more than once called them.

The friendship among the three of them developed because, in a way, Torridge was what he was. From the first time they were aware of him – on the first night of their first term – he appeared to be special. In the darkness after lights-out someone was trying not to sob and Torridge’s voice was piping away, not homesick in the least. His father had a button business was what he was saying: he’d probably be going into the button business himself. In the morning he was identified, a boy in red-and-blue striped pyjamas, still chattering in the wash-room. ‘What’s your father do, Torridge?’ Arrowsmith asked at breakfast, and that was the beginning. ‘Dad’s in the button business,’ Torridge beamingly replied. ‘Torridge’s, you know.’ But no one did know.

He didn’t, as other new boys did, make a particular friend. For a while he attached himself to a small gang of homesick boys who had only their malady in common, but after a time this gang broke up and Torridge found himself on his own, though it seemed quite happily so. He was often to be found in the room of the kindly housemaster of junior House, an ageing white-haired figure called Old Frosty, who listened sympathetically to complaints of injustice at the hands of other masters, always ready to agree that the world was a hard place. ‘You should hear Buller Yeats on Torridge, sir,’ Wiltshire used to say in Torridge’s presence. ‘You’d think Torridge had no feelings, sir.’ Old Frosty would reply that Buller Yeats was a frightful man. ‘Take no notice, Torridge,’ he’d add in his kindly voice, and Torridge would smile, making it clear that he didn’t mind in the least what Buller Yeats said. ‘Torridge knows true happiness,’ a new young master, known as Mad Wallace, said in an unguarded moment one day, a remark which caused immediate uproar in a geography class. It was afterwards much repeated, like ‘Dad’s in the button business’ and ‘Torridge’s, you know.’ The true happiness of Torridge became a joke, the particular property of Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith. Furthering the joke, they claimed that knowing Torridge was a rare experience, that the private realm of his innocence and his happiness was even exotic. Wiltshire insisted that one day the school would be proud of him. The joke was worked to death.

At the school it was the habit of certain senior boys to ‘take an interest in’ juniors. This varied from glances and smiles across the dining-hall to written invitations to meet in some secluded spot at a stated time. Friendships, taking a variety of forms, were then initiated. It was flattering, and very often a temporary antidote for homesickness, when a new boy received the agreeable but bewildering attentions of an important fifth-former. A meeting behind Chapel led to the negotiating of a barbed-wire fence on a slope of gorse bushes, the older boy solicitous and knowledgeable. There were well-trodden paths and nooks among the gorse where smoking could take place with comparative safety. Farther afield, in the hills, there were crude shelters composed of stones and corrugated iron. Here, too, the emphasis was on smoking and romance.

New boys very soon became aware of the nature of older boys’ interest in them. The flattery changed its shape, an adjustment was made – or the new boys retreated in panic from this area of school life. Andrews and Butler, Webb and Mace-Hamilton, Dillon and Pratt, Tothill and Goldfish Stewart, Good and Wiltshire, Sainsbury Major and Arrowsmith, Brewitt and Whyte: the liaisons were renowned, the combinations of names sometimes seeming like a music-hall turn, a soft-shoe shuffle of entangled hearts. There was faithlessness, too: the Honourable Anthony Swain made the rounds of the senior boys, a fickle and tartish bijou, desired and yet despised.

Torridge’s puddingy appearance did not suggest that he had bijou qualities, and glances did not readily come his way in the dining-hall. This was often the fate, or good fortune, of new boys and was not regarded as a sign of qualities lacking. Yet quite regularly an ill-endowed child would mysteriously become the object of fifth- and sixth-form desire. This remained a puzzle to the juniors until they themselves became fifth –or sixth-formers and desire was seen to have to do with something deeper than superficial good looks.

It was the apparent evidence of this truth that caused Torridge, first of all, to be aware of the world of bijou and protector. He received a note from a boy in the Upper Fifth who had previously eschewed the sexual life offered by the school. He was a big, black-haired youth with glasses and a protruding forehead, called Fisher.

‘Hey, what’s this mean?’ Torridge inquired, finding the note under his pillow, tucked into his pyjamas. ‘Here’s a bloke wants to go for a walk.’

He read the invitation out: ‘If you would like to come for a walk meet me by the electricity plant behind Chapel. Half past four Tuesday afternoon. R.A.J. Fisher.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Armstrong.

‘You’ve got an admirer, Porridge,’ Mace-Hamilton said.

‘Admirer?’

‘He wants you to be his bijou,’ Wiltshire explained.

‘What’s it mean, bijou?’

‘Tart, it means, Porridge.’

‘Tart?’

‘Friend. He wants to be your protector.’

‘What’s it mean, protector?’

‘He loves you, Porridge.’

‘I don’t even know the bloke.’

‘He’s the one with the big forehead. He’s a half-wit actually.’

‘Half-wit?’

‘His mother let him drop on his head. Like yours did, Porridge.’

‘My mum never.’

Everyone was crowding around Torridge’s bed. The note was passed from hand to hand. ‘What’s your dad do, Porridge?’ Wiltshire suddenly asked, and Torridge automatically replied that he was in the button business.

‘You’ve got to write a note back to Fisher, you know,’ Mace-Hamilton pointed out.

‘Dear Fisher,’ Wiltshire prompted, ‘I love you.’

‘But I don’t even –’

‘It doesn’t matter not knowing him. You’ve got to write a letter and put it in his pyjamas.’

Torridge didn’t say anything. He placed the note in the top pocket of his jacket and slowly began to undress. The other boys drifted back to their own beds, still amused by the development. In the wash-room the next morning Torridge said:

‘I think he’s quite nice, that Fisher.’

‘Had a dream about him, did you, Porridge?’ Mace-Hamilton inquired. ‘Got up to tricks, did he?’

‘No harm in going for a walk.’

‘No harm at all, Porridge.’

In fact, a mistake had been made. Fisher, in his haste or his excitement, had placed the note under the wrong pillow. It was Arrowsmith, still allied with Sainsbury Major, whom he wished to attract.

That this error had occurred was borne in on Torridge when he turned up at the electricity plant on the following Tuesday. He had not considered it necessary to reply to Fisher’s note, but he had, across the dining-hall, essayed a smile or two in the older boy’s direction: it had surprised him to meet, with no response. It surprised him rather more to meet with no response by the electricity plant. Fisher just looked at him and then turned his back, pretending to whistle.

‘Hullo, Fisher,’ Torridge said.

‘Hop it, look. I’m waiting for someone.’

‘I’m Torridge, Fisher.’

‘I don’t care who you are.’

‘You wrote me that letter.’ Torridge was still smiling. ‘About a walk, Fisher.’

‘Walk? What walk?’

‘You put the letter under my pillow, Fisher.’

‘Jesus!’ said Fisher.

The encounter was observed by Arrowsmith, Mace-Hamilton and Wiltshire, who had earlier taken up crouched positions behind one of the chapel buttresses. Torridge heard the familiar hoots of laughter, and because it was his way he joined in. Fisher, white-faced, strode away.

‘Poor old Porridge,’ Arrowsmith commiserated, gasping and pretending to be contorted with mirth. Mace-Hamilton and Wiltshire were leaning against the buttress, issuing shrill noises.

‘Gosh,’ Torridge said, ‘I don’t care.’

He went away, still laughing a bit, and there the matter of Fisher’s attempt at communication might have ended. In fact it didn’t, because Fisher wrote a second time and this time he made certain that the right boy received his missive. But Arrowsmith, still firmly the property of Sainsbury Major, wished to have nothing to do with R.A.J. Fisher.

When he was told the details of Fisher’s error, Torridge said he’d guessed it had been something like that. But Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith claimed that a new sadness had overcome Torridge. Something beautiful had been going to happen to him, Wiltshire said: just as the petals of friendship were opening the flower had been crudely snatched away. Arrowsmith said Torridge reminded him of one of Picasso’s sorrowful harlequins. One way or the other, it was agreed that the experience would be beneficial to Torridge’s sensitivity. It was seen as his reason for turning to religion, which recently he had done, joining a band of similarly inclined boys who were inspired by the word of the chaplain, a figure known as God Harvey. God Harvey was ascetic, seeming dangerously thin, his face all edge and as pale as milk, his cassock odorous with incense. He conducted readings in his room, offering coffee and biscuits afterwards, though not himself partaking of these refreshments. ‘God Harvey’s linnets’ his acolytes were called, for often a hymn was sung to round things off. Welcomed into this fold, Torridge regained his happiness.

R.A.J. Fisher, on the other hand, sank into greater gloom. Arrowsmith remained elusive, mockingly faithful to Sainsbury Major, haughty when Fisher glanced pleadingly, ignoring all his letters. Fisher developed a look of introspective misery. The notes that Arrowsmith delightedly showed around were full of longing, increasingly tinged with desperation. The following term, unexpectedly, Fisher did not return to the school.

There was a famous Assembly at the beginning of that term, with much speculation beforehand as to the trouble in the air. Rumour had it that once and for all an attempt was to be made to stamp out the smiles and the glances in the dining-hall, the whole business of bijoux and protectors, even the faithless behaviour of the Honourable Anthony Swain. The school waited and then the gowned staff arrived in the Assembly Hall and waited also, in grim anticipation on a raised dais. Public beatings for past offenders were scheduled, it was whispered: the Sergeant-major –the school’s boxing instructor, who had himself told tales of public, beatings in the past –would inflict the punishment at the headmaster’s bidding. But that did not happen. Stout and pompous and red-skinned, the headmaster marched to the dais unaccompanied by the Sergeant-major. Twitching with anger that many afterwards declared had been simulated, he spoke at great length of the school’s traditions. He stated that for fourteen years he had been proud to be its headmaster. He spoke of decency, and then of his own dismay. The school had been dishonoured; he would wish certain practices to cease. ‘I stand before you ashamed,’ he added, and paused for a moment. ‘Let all this cease,’ he commanded. He marched away, tugging at his gown in a familiar manner.

No one understood why the Assembly had taken place at that particular time, on the first day of a summer term. Only the masters looked knowing, as though labouring beneath some secret, but pressed and pleaded with they refused to reveal anything. Even Old Frosty, usually a most reliable source on such occasions, remained awesomely tight-lipped.

But the pronounced dismay and shame of the headmaster changed nothing. That term progressed and the world of bijoux and their protectors continued as before, the glances, the meetings, cigarettes and romance in the hillside huts. R.A.J. Fisher was soon forgotten, having never made much of a mark. But the story of his error in placing a note under Torridge’s pillow passed into legend, as did the encounter by the electricity plant and Torridge’s deprivation of a relationship. The story was repeated as further terms passed by; new boys heard it and viewed Torridge with greater interest, imagining what R.A.J. Fisher had been like. The liaisons of Wiltshire with Good, Mace-Hamilton with Webb, and Arrowsmith with Sainsbury Major continued until the three senior boys left the school. Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith found fresh protectors then, and later these new liaisons came to an end in a similar manner. Later still, Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith ceased to be bijoux and became protectors themselves.

Torridge pursued the religious side of things. He continued to be a frequent partaker of God Harvey’s biscuits and spiritual uplift, and a useful presence among the chapel pews, where he voluntarily dusted, cleaned brass and kept the hymn-books in a state of repair with Sellotape. Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith continued to circulate stories about him which were not true: that he was the product of virgin birth, that he possessed the gift of tongues but did not care to employ it, that he had three kidneys. In the end there emanated from them the claim that a liaison existed between Torridge and God Harvey. ‘Love and the holy spirit’, Wiltshire pronounced, suggesting an ambience of chapel fustiness and God Harvey’s grey boniness. The swish of his cassock took on a new significance, as did his thin, dry fingers. In a holy way the fingers pressed themselves on to Torridge, and then their holiness became a passion that could not be imagined. It was all a joke because Torridge was Torridge, but the laughter it caused wasn’t malicious because no one hated him. He was a figure of fun; no one sought his downfall because there was no downfall to seek.

The friendship between Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith continued after they left the school, after all three had married and had families. Once a year they received the Old Boys’ magazine, which told of the achievements of themselves and the more successful of their schoolfellows. There were Old Boys’ cocktail parties and Old Boys’ Day at the school every June and the Old Boys’ cricket match. Some of these occasions, from time to time, they attended. Every so often they received the latest rebuilding programme, with the suggestion that they might like to contribute to the rebuilding fund. Occasionally they did.

As middle age closed in, the three friends met less often. Arrowsmith was an executive with Shell and stationed for longish periods in different countries abroad. Once every two years he brought his family back to England, which provided an opportunity for the three friends to meet. The wives met on these occasions also, and over the years the children. Often the men’s distant schooldays were referred to, Buller Yeats and Old Frosty and the Sergeant-major, the stout headmaster, and above all Torridge. Within the three families, in fact, Torridge had become a myth. The joke that had begun when they were all new boys together continued, as if driven by its own impetus. In the minds of the wives and children the innocence of Torridge, his true happiness in the face of mockery and his fondness for the religious side of life all lived on. With some exactitude a physical image of the boy he’d been took root; his neatly knotted maroon House tie, his polished shoes, the hair that resembled a mouse’s fur, the pudding face with two small eyes in it. ‘My dad’s in the button business,’ Arrowsmith had only to say to cause instant laughter. ‘Torridge’s, you know.’ The way Torridge ate, the way he ran, the way he smiled back at Buller Yeats, the rumour that he’d been dropped on his head as a baby, that he had three kidneys: all this was considerably appreciated, because Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith related it well.

What was not related was R.A.J. Fisher’s error in placing a note beneath Torridge’s pillow, or the story that had laughingly been spread about concerning Torridge’s relationship with God Harvey. This would have meant revelations that weren’t seemly in family circles, the explanation of the world of bijou and protector, the romance and cigarettes in the hillside huts, the entangling of hearts. The subject had been touched upon among the three husbands and their wives in the normal course of private conversation, although not everything had been quite recalled. Listening, the wives had formed the impression that the relationships between older and younger boys at their husbands’ school were similar to the platonic admiration a junior girl had so often harboured for a senior girl at their own schools. And so the subject had been left.

One evening in June, 1976, Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton met in a bar called the Vine, in Piccadilly Place. They hadn’t seen one another since the summer of 1974, the last time Arrowsmith and his family had been in England. Tonight they were to meet the Arrowsmiths again, for a family dinner in the Woodlands Hotel, Richmond. On the last occasion the three families had celebrated their reunion at the Wiltshires’ house in Cobham and the time before with the Mace-Hamiltons in Ealing. Arrowsmith insisted that it was a question of turn and turn about and every third time he arranged for the family dinner to be held at his expense at the Woodlands. It was convenient because, although the Arrowsmiths spent the greater part of each biennial leave with Mrs Arrowsmith’s parents in Somerset, they always stayed for a week at the Woodlands in order to see a bit of London life.

In the Vine in Piccadilly Place Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton hurried over their second drinks. As always, they were pleased to see one another, and both were excited at the prospect of seeing Arrowsmith and his family again. They still looked faintly alike. Both had balded arid run to fat. They wore inconspicuous blue suits with a discreet chalk stripe, Wiltshire’s a little smarter than Mace-Hamilton’s.

‘We’ll be late,’ Wiltshire said, having just related how he’d made a small killing since the last time they’d met. Wiltshire operated in the import-export world; Mace-Hamilton was a chartered accountant.

They finished their drinks. ‘Cheerio,’ the barman called out to them as they slipped away. His voice was deferentially low, matching the softly lit surroundings. ‘Cheerio, Gerry,’ Wiltshire said.

They drove in Wiltshire’s car to Hammersmith, over the bridge and on to Barnes and Richmond. It was a Friday evening; the traffic was heavy.

‘He had a bit of trouble, you know,’ Mace-Hamilton said.

‘Arrows?’

‘She took a shine to some guy in Mombasa.’

Wiltshire nodded, poking the car between a cyclist and a taxi. He wasn’t surprised. One night six years ago Arrowsmith’s wife and he had committed adultery together at her suggestion. A messy business it had been, and afterwards he’d felt terrible.

In the Woodlands Hotel Arrowsmith, in a grey flannel suit, was not entirely sober. He, too, had run a bit to fat although, unlike Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton, he hadn’t lost any of his hair. Instead, it had dramatically changed colour: what Old Frosty had once called ‘Arrows’ blond thatch’ was grey now. Beneath it his face was pinker than it had been and he had taken to wearing spectacles, heavy and black-rimmed, making him look even more different from the boy he’d been.

In the bar of the Woodlands he drank whisky on his own, smiling occasionally to himself because tonight he had a surprise for everybody. After five weeks of being cooped up with his in-laws in Somerset he was feeling good. ‘Have one yourself, dear,’ he invited the barmaid, a girl with an excess of lipstick on a podgy mouth. He pushed his own glass towards her while she was saying she didn’t mind if she did.

His wife and his three adolescent children, two boys and a girl, entered the bar with Mrs Mace-Hamilton. ‘Hi, hi, hi,’ Arrowsmith called out to them in a jocular manner, causing his wife and Mrs Mace-Hamilton to note that he was drunk again. They sat down while he quickly finished the whisky that had just been poured for him. ‘Put another in that for a start,’ he ordered the barmaid, and crossed the floor of the bar to find out what everyone else wanted.

Mrs Wiltshire and her twins, girls of twelve, arrived while drinks were being decided about. Arrowsmith kissed her, as he had kissed Mrs Mace-Hamilton. The barmaid, deciding that the accurate conveying of such a large order was going to be beyond him, came and stood by the two tables that the party now occupied. The order was given; an animated conversation began.

The three women were different in appearance and in manner. Mrs Arrowsmith was thin as a knife, fashionably dressed in a shade of ash-grey that reflected her ash-grey hair. She smoked perpetually, unable to abandon the habit, Mrs Wiltshire was small. Shyness caused her to coil herself up in the presence of other people so that she often resembled a ball. Tonight she was in pink, a faded shade. Mrs Mace-Hamilton was carelessly plump, a large woman attired in a carelessly chosen dress that had begonias on it. She rather frightened Mrs Wiltshire. Mrs Arrowsmith found her trying.

‘Oh, heavenly little drink!’ Mrs Arrowsmith said, briefly drooping her blue-tinged eyelids as she sipped her gin and tonic.

‘It is good to see you,’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton gushed, beaming at everyone and vaguely raising her glass. ‘And how they’ve all grown!’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton had not had children herself.

‘Their boobs have grown, by God,’ the older Arrowsmith boy murmured to his brother, a reference to the Wiltshire twins. Neither of the two Arrowsmith boys went to their father’s school: one was at a preparatory school in Oxford, the other at Charterhouse. Being of an age to do so, they both drank sherry and intended to drink as much of it as they possibly could. They found these family occasions tedious. Their sister, about to go to university, had determined neither to speak nor to smile for the entire evening. The Wiltshire twins were quite looking forward to the food.

Arrowsmith sat beside Mrs Wiltshire, He didn’t say anything but after a moment he stretched a hand over her two knees and squeezed them in what he intended to be a brotherly way. He said without conviction that it was great to see her. He didn’t look at her while he spoke. He didn’t much care for hanging about with the women and children.

In turn Mrs Wiltshire didn’t much care for his hand on her knees and was relieved when he drew it away. ‘Hi, hi, hi,’ he suddenly called out, causing her to jump. Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton had appeared.

The physical similarity that had been so pronounced when the three men were boys and had been only faintly noticeable between Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton in the Vine was clearly there again, as if the addition of Arrowsmith had supplied missing reflections. The men had thickened in the same way; the pinkness of Arrowsmith’s countenance was a pinkness that tinged the other faces too. Only Arrowsmith’s grey thatch of hair seemed out of place, all wrong beside the baldness of the other two: in their presence it might have been a wig, an impression it did not otherwise give. His grey flannel suit, beside their pinstripes, looked like something put on by mistake. ‘Hi, hi, hi,’ he shouted, thumping their shoulders.

Further rounds of drinks were bought and consumed. The Arrowsmith boys declared to each other that they were drunk and made further sotto voce observations about the forming bodies of the Wiltshire twins. Mrs Wiltshire felt the occasion becoming easier as Cinzano Bianco coursed through her bloodstream. Mrs Arrowsmith was aware of a certain familiar edginess within her body, a desire to be elsewhere, alone with a man she did not know. Mrs Mace-Hamilton spoke loudly of her garden.

In time the party moved from the bar to the dining-room. ‘Bring us another round at the table,’ Arrowsmith commanded the lipsticked barmaid. ‘Quick as you can, dear.’

In the large dim dining-room waiters settled them around a table with little vases of carnations on it, a long table beneath the chandelier in the centre of the room. Celery soup arrived at the table, and smoked salmon and pâté, and the extra round of drinks Arrowsmith had ordered, and bottles of Nuits St Georges, and bottles of Vouvray and Anjou Rosé, and sirloin of beef, chicken à la king and veal escalope. The Arrowsmith boys laughed shrilly, openly staring at the tops of the Wiltshire twins’ bodies. Potatoes, peas, spinach and carrots were served. Mrs Arrowsmith waved the vegetables away and smoked between courses. It was after this dinner six years ago that she had made her suggestion to Wiltshire, both of them being the worse for wear and it seeming not to matter because of that. ‘Oh, isn’t this jolly?’ the voice of Mrs Mace-Hamilton boomed above the general hubbub.

Over Chantilly trifle and Orange Surprise the name of Torridge was heard. The name was always mentioned just about now, though sometimes sooner. ‘Poor old bean,’ Wiltshire said, and everybody laughed because it was the one subject they all shared, No one really wanted to hear about the Mace-Hamiltons’ garden; the comments of the Arrowsmith boys were only for each other; Mrs Arrowsmith’s needs could naturally not be voiced; the shyness of Mrs Wiltshire was private too. But Torridge was different. Torridge in a way was like an old friend now, existing in everyone’s mind, a family subject. The Wiltshire twins were quite amused to hear of some freshly remembered evidence of Torridge’s naïveté; for the Arrowsmith girl it was better at least than being questioned by Mrs Mace-Hamilton; for her brothers it was an excuse to bellow with simulated mirth. Mrs Mace-Hamilton considered that the boy sounded frightful, Mrs Arrowsmith couldn’t have cared less. Only Mrs Wiltshire had doubts: she thought the three men were hard on the memory of the boy, but of course had not ever said so. Tonight, after Wiltshire had recalled the time when Torridge had been convinced by Arrowsmith that Buller Yeats had dropped dead in his bath, the younger Arrowsmith boy told of a boy at his own school who’d been convinced that his sister’s dog had died.

‘Listen,’ Arrowsmith suddenly shouted out. ‘He’s going to join us. Old Torridge.’

There was laughter, no one believing that Torridge was going to arrive, Mrs Arrowsmith saying to herself that her husband was pitiful when he became as drunk as this.

‘I thought it would be a gesture,’ Arrowsmith said. ‘Honestly. He’s looking in for coffee.’

‘You bloody devil, Arrows,’ Wiltshire said, smacking the table with the palm of his hand.

‘He’s in the button business,’ Arrowsmith shouted. ‘Torridge’s, you know.’

As far as Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton could remember, Torridge had never featured in an Old Boys’ magazine. No news of his career had been printed, and certainly no obituary. It was typical, somehow, of Arrowsmith to have winkled him out. It was part and parcel of him to want to add another dimension to the joke, to recharge its batteries. For the sight of Torridge in middle age would surely make funnier the reported anecdotes.

‘After all, what’s wrong,’ demanded Arrowsmith noisily, ‘with old school pals meeting up? The more the merrier.’

He was a bully, Mrs Wiltshire thought: all three of them were bullies.

Torridge arrived at half past nine. The hair that had been like a mouse’s fur was still like that. It hadn’t greyed any more; the scalp hadn’t balded. He hadn’t run to fat; in middle age he’d thinned down a bit. There was even a lankiness about him now, which was reflected in his movements. At school he had moved slowly, as though with caution. Jauntily attired in a pale linen suit, he crossed the dining-room of the Woodlands Hotel with a step as nimble as a tap-dancer’s.

No one recognized him. To the three men who’d been at school with him the man who approached their dinner table was a different person, quite unlike the figure that existed in the minds of the wives and children.

‘My dear Arrows,’ he said, smiling at Arrowsmith. The smile was different too, a brittle snap of a smile that came and went in a matter-of-fact way. The eyes that had been small didn’t seem so in his thinner face. They flashed with a gleam of some kind, matching the snap of his smile.

‘Good God, it’s never old Porridge!’ Arrowsmith’s voice was slurred. His face had acquired the beginnings of an alcoholic crimson, sweat glistened on his forehead.

‘Yes, it’s old Porridge,’ Torridge said quietly. He held his hand out towards Arrowsmith and then shook hands with Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton. He was introduced to their wives, with whom he shook hands also. He was introduced to the children, which involved further handshaking. His hand was cool and rather hard: they felt it should have been damp.

‘You’re nicely in time for coffee, Mr Torridge,’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton said.

‘Brandy more like,’ Arrowsmith suggested. ‘Brandy, old chap?’

‘Well, that’s awfully kind of you, Arrows. Chartreuse I’d prefer, really.’

A waiter drew up a chair. Room was made for Torridge between Mrs Mace-Hamilton and the Arrowsmith boys. It was a frightful mistake, Wiltshire was thinking. It was mad of Arrowsmith.

Mace-Hamilton examined Torridge across the dinner table. The old Torridge would have said he’d rather not have anything alcoholic, that a cup of tea and a biscuit were more his line in the evenings. It was impossible to imagine this man saying his dad had a button business. There was a suavity about him that made Mace-Hamilton uneasy. Because of what had been related to his wife and the other wives and their children he felt he’d been caught out in a lie, yet in fact that wasn’t the case.

The children stole glances at Torridge, trying to see him as the boy who’d been described to them, and failing to. Mrs Arrowsmith said to herself that all this stuff they’d been told over the years had clearly been rubbish. Mrs Mace-Hamilton was bewildered. Mrs Wiltshire was pleased.

‘No one ever guessed,’ Torridge said, ‘what became of R.A.J. Fisher.’ He raised the subject suddenly, without introduction.

‘Oh God, Fisher,’ Mace-Hamilton said.

‘Who’s Fisher?’ the younger of the Arrowsmith boys inquired.

Torridge turned to flash his quick smile at the boy. ‘He left,’ he said. ‘In unfortunate circumstances.’

‘You’ve changed a lot, you know,’ Arrowsmith said. ‘Don’t you think he’s changed?’ he asked Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton.

‘Out of recognition,’ Wiltshire said.

Torridge laughed easily. ‘I’ve become adventurous. I’m a late developer, I suppose.’

‘What kind of unfortunate circumstances?’ the younger Arrowsmith boy asked. ‘Was Fisher expelled?’

‘Oh no, not at all,’ Mace-Hamilton said hurriedly.

‘Actually,’ Torridge said, ‘Fisher’s trouble all began with the writing of a note. Don’t you remember? He put it in my pyjamas. But it wasn’t for me at all.’

He smiled again. He turned to Mrs Wiltshire in a way that seemed polite, drawing her into the conversation. ‘I was an innocent at school. But innocence slips away. I found my way about eventually.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she murmured. She didn’t like him, even though she was glad he wasn’t as he might have been. There was malevolence in him, a ruthlessness that seemed like a work of art. He seemed like a work of art himself, as though in losing the innocence he spoke of he had recreated himself.

‘I often wonder about Fisher,’ he remarked.

The Wiltshire twins giggled. ‘What’s so great about this bloody Fisher?’ the older Arrowsmith boy murmured, nudging his brother with an elbow.

‘What’re you doing these days?’ Wiltshire asked, interrupting Mace-Hamilton, who had also begun to say something.

‘I make buttons,’ Torridge replied. ‘You may recall my father made buttons.’

‘Ah, here’re the drinks,’ Arrowsmith rowdily observed.

‘I don’t much keep up with the school,’ Torridge said as the waiter placed a glass of Chartreuse in front of him. ‘I don’t so much as think about it except for wondering about poor old Fisher. Our headmaster was a cretin,’ he informed Mrs Wiltshire.

Again the Wiltshire twins giggled. The Arrowsmith girl yawned and her brothers giggled also, amused that the name of Fisher had come up again.

‘You will have coffee, Mr Torridge?’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton offered, for the waiter had brought a fresh pot to the table. She held it poised above a cup. Torridge smiled at her and nodded. She said:

‘Pearl buttons d’you make?’

‘No, not pearl.’

‘Remember those awful packet peas we used to have?’ Arrowsmith inquired. Wiltshire said:

‘Use plastics at all? In your buttons, Porridge?’

‘No, we don’t use plastics. Leathers, various leathers. And horn. We specialize.’

‘How very interesting!’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton exclaimed

‘No, no. It’s rather ordinary really.’ He paused, and then added, ‘someone once told me that Fisher went into a timber business. But of course that was far from true.’

‘A chap was expelled a year ago,’ the younger Arrowsmith boy said, contributing this in order to cover up a fresh outburst of sniggering. ‘For stealing a transistor.’

Torridge nodded, appearing to be interested. He asked the Arrowsmith boys where they were at school. The older one said Charterhouse and his brother gave the name of his preparatory school. Torridge nodded again and asked their sister and she said she was waiting to go to university. He had quite a chat with the Wiltshire twins about their school. They considered it pleasant the way he bothered, seeming genuinely to want to know. The giggling died away.

‘I imagined Fisher wanted me for his bijou,’ he said when all that was over, still addressing the children. ‘Our place was riddled with fancy larks like that. Remember?’ he added, turning to Mace-Hamilton.

‘Bijou?’ one of the twins asked before Mace-Hamilton could reply.

‘A male tart,’ Torridge explained.

The Arrowsmith boys gaped at him, the older one with his mouth actually open. The Wiltshire twins began to giggle again. The Arrowsmith girl frowned, unable to hide her interest.

‘The Honourable Anthony Swain,’ Torridge said, ‘was no better than a whore.’

Mrs Arrowsmith, who for some minutes had been engaged with her own thoughts, was suddenly aware that the man who was in the button business was talking about sex. She gazed diagonally across the table at him, astonished that he should be talking in this way.

‘Look here, Torridge,’ Wiltshire said, frowning at him and shaking his head. With an almost imperceptible motion he gestured towards the wives and children.

‘Andrews and Butler. Dillon and Pratt. Tothill and Goldfish Stewart. Your dad,’ Torridge said to the Arrowsmith girl, ‘was always very keen. Sainsbury Major in particular.’

‘Now look here,’ Arrowsmith shouted, beginning to get to his feet and then changing his mind.

‘My gosh, how they broke chaps’ hearts, those three!’

‘Please don’t talk like this.’ It was Mrs Wiltshire who protested, to everyone’s surprise, most of all her own. ‘The children are quite young, Mr Torridge.’

Her voice had become a whisper. She could feel herself reddening with embarrassment, and a little twirl of sickness occurred in her stomach. Deferentially, as though appreciating the effort she had made, Torridge apologized.

‘I think you’d better go,’ Arrowsmith said.

‘You were right about God Harvey, Arrows. Gay as a grig he was, beneath that cassock. So was Old Frosty, as a matter of fact.’

‘Really!’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton cried, her bewilderment turning into outrage. She glared at her husband, demanding with her eyes that instantly something should be done. But her husband and his two friends were briefly stunned by what Torridge had claimed for God Harvey. Their schooldays leapt back at them, possessing them for a vivid moment: the dormitory, the dining-hall, the glances and the invitations, the meetings behind Chapel. It was somehow in keeping with the school’s hypocrisy that God Harvey had had inclinations himself, that a rumour begun as an outrageous joke should have contained the truth.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Torridge went on, ‘I wouldn’t be what I am if it hadn’t been for God Harvey. I’m what they call queer,’ he explained to the children. ‘I perform sexual acts with men.’

‘For God’s sake, Torridge,’ Arrowsmith shouted, on his feet, his face the colour of ripe strawberry, his watery eyes quivering with rage.

‘It was nice of you to invite me tonight, Arrows. Our alma mater can’t be too proud of chaps like me.’

People spoke at once, Mrs Mace-Hamilton and Mrs Wiltshire, all three men. Mrs Arrowsmith sat still. What she was thinking was that she had become quietly drunk while her husband had more boisterously reached the same condition. She was thinking, as well, that by the sound of things he’d possessed as a boy a sexual urge that was a lot livelier than the one he’d once exposed her to and now hardly ever did. With boys who had grown to be men he had had a whale of a time. Old Frosty had been a kind of Mr Chips, she’d been told. She’d never ever heard of Sainsbury Major or God Harvey.

‘It’s quite disgusting,’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton’s voice cried out above the other voices. She said the police should be called. It was scandalous to have to listen to unpleasant conversation like this. She began to say the children should leave the dining-room, but changed her mind because it appeared that Torridge himself was about to go. ‘You’re a most horrible man,’ she cried.

Confusion gathered, like a fog around the table. Mrs Wiltshire, who knew that her husband had committed adultery with Mrs Arrowsmith, felt another bout of nerves in her stomach. ‘Because she was starved, that’s why,’ her husband had almost violently confessed when she’d discovered. ‘I was putting her out of her misery.’ She had wept then and he had comforted her as best he could. She had not told him that he had never succeeded in arousing in her the desire to make love: she had always assumed that to be a failing in herself, but now for some reason she was not so sure. Nothing had been directly said that might have caused this doubt, but an instinct informed Mrs Wiltshire that the doubt should be there. The man beside her smiled his brittle, malevolent smile at her, as if in sympathy.

With his head bent over the table and his hands half hiding his face, the younger Arrowsmith boy examined his father by glancing through his fingers. There were men whom his parents warned him against, men who would sit beside you in buses or try to give you a lift in a car. This man who had come tonight, who had been such a joke up till now, was apparently one of these, not a joke at all. And the confusion was greater: at one time, it seemed, his father had been like that too.

The Arrowsmith girl considered her father also. Once she had walked into a room in Lagos to find her mother in the arms of an African clerk. Ever since she had felt sorry for her father. There’d been an unpleasant scene at the time, she’d screamed at her mother and later in a fury had told her father what she’d seen. He’d nodded, wearily seeming not to be surprised, while her mother had miserably wept. She’d put her arms around her father, comforting him; she’d felt no mercy for her mother, no sympathy or understanding. The scene formed vividly in her mind as she sat at the dinner table: it appeared to be relevant in the confusion and yet not clearly so. Her parents’ marriage was messy, messier than it had looked. Across the table her mother grimly smoked, focusing her eyes with difficulty. She smiled at her daughter, a soft, inebriated smile.

The older Arrowsmith boy was also aware of the confusion. Being at a school where the practice which had been spoken of was common enough, he could easily believe the facts that had been thrown about. Against his will, he was forced to imagine what he had never imagined before: his father and his friends as schoolboys, engaged in passion with other boys. He might have been cynical about this image but he could not. Instead it made him want to gasp. It knocked away the smile that had been on his face all evening.

The Wiltshire twins unhappily stared at the white tablecloth, here and there stained with wine or gravy. They, too, found they’d lost the urge to smile and instead shakily blinked back tears.

‘Yes, perhaps I’d better go,’ Torridge said.

With impatience Mrs Mace-Hamilton looked at her husband, as if expecting him to hurry Torridge off or at least to say something. But Mace-Hamilton remained silent. Mrs Mace-Hamilton licked her lips, preparing to speak herself. She changed her mind.

‘Fisher didn’t go into a timber business,’ Torridge said, ‘because poor old Fisher was dead as a doornail. Which is why our cretin of a headmaster, Mrs Mace-Hamilton, had that Assembly.’

‘Assembly?’ she said. Her voice was weak, although she’d meant it to sound matter-of-fact and angry.

‘There was an Assembly that no one understood. Poor old Fisher had strung himself up in a barn on his father’s farm. I discovered that,’ Torridge said, turning to Arrowsmith, ‘years later: from God Harvey actually. The poor chap left a note but the parents didn’t care to pass it on. I mean it was for you, Arrows.’

Arrowsmith was still standing, hanging over the table. ‘Note?’ he said. ‘For me?’

‘Another note. Why d’you think he did himself in, Arrows?’

Torridge smiled, at Arrowsmith and then around the table.

‘None of that’s true,’ Wiltshire said.

‘As a matter of fact it is.’

He went, and nobody spoke at the dinner table. A body of a schoolboy hung from a beam in a barn, a note on the straw below his dangling feet. It hung in the confusion that had been caused, increasing the confusion. Two waiters hovered by a sideboard, one passing the time by arranging sauce bottles, the other folding napkins into cone shapes. Slowly Arrowsmith sat down again. The silence continued as the conversation of Torridge continued to haunt the dinner table. He haunted it himself, with his brittle smile and his tap-dancer’s elegance, still faithful to the past in which he had so signally failed, triumphant in his middle age.

Then Mrs Arrowsmith quite suddenly wept and the Wiltshire twins wept and Mrs Wiltshire comforted them. The Arrowsmith girl got up and walked away, and Mrs Mace-Hamilton turned to the three men and said they should be ashamed of themselves, allowing all this to happen.