Aitcheson! Everyone knows it was you.’
‘Oh God! How did you find out? Do you think Headman knows?’
Adrian memorised all the replies and reproduced them as faithfully as he could.
And then the authorities had struck back.
Adrian’s Housemaster, Tickford, rose to his feet after lunch that same day, as did the other eleven Housemasters in the other eleven Houses.
‘All copies of this magazine will be collected from studies by the prefects before Games this afternoon and destroyed. Anyone found in possession of a copy after three o’clock will be severely punished.’
Adrian had never seen Tickford look so furious. He wondered if he could possibly have guessed that
Bollocks!
had originated in his House.
He and Tom had handed their two copies in cheerfully.
‘There you go, Hauptmann Bennett-Jones,’ said Adrian, ‘we have also an edition of
The Trial
, by the notorious Jew, Kafka. Berlin would appreciate it, I am thinking, if this too was added to the bonfire. Also the works of that decadent lesbian Bolshevik, Jane Austen.’
‘You’d better watch it, Healey. You’re on the list. If you had anything to do with this piece of shit then you are in trouble.’
‘Thank you, Sargent. You needn’t take up any more of our valuable time. I’m sure you have many calls of a similar nature to make in the neighbourhood.’
But for all the sensational impact of the magazine, Adrian felt somehow a sense of anti-climax. His article would never make a shred of difference to anything. He hadn’t exactly expected open warfare in the form-rooms, but it was depressing to realise that if he and Bullock and the others were exposed tomorrow they would be expelled, talked about for a while and then completely forgotten. Boys were cowardly and conventional. That’s why the system worked, he supposed.
He sensed too that if he came across the article in later life, as a twenty-year-old, he would shudder with embarrassment at the pretension of it. But why should his future self sneer at what he was now? It was terrible to know that time would lead him to betray everything he now believed in.
What I am now is
right
, he told himself. I will never see things as clearly again, I will never understand everything as fully as I do at this minute.
The world would never change if people got sucked into it.
He tried to explain his feelings to Tom, but Tom was not in communicative mood.
‘Seems to me there’s only one way to change the world,’ said Tom.
‘And what’s that?’ asked Adrian.
‘Change yourself.’
‘Oh, that’s bollocks!’
‘And
Bollocks!
tells the truth.’
He went to the library and read up his symptoms in more detail. Cyril Connolly, Robin Maugham, T.C. Worsley, Robert Graves, Simon Raven: they had all had their Cartwrights. And the novels! Dozens of them.
Lord Dismiss Us, The Loom of Youth, The Fourth of June, Sandel, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Hill
…
He was one of a long line of mimsy and embittered middle-class sensitives who disguised their feeble and decadent lust as something spiritual and Socratic.
And why not? If it meant he had to end his days on some Mediterranean island writing lyric prose for Faber and Faber and literary criticism for the
New Statesman
, running through successions of houseboys and ‘secretaries’, getting sloshed on Fernet Branca and having to pay off the Chief of Police every six months, then so be it. Better than driving to the office in the rain.
In a temper, he took out a large Bible, opened it at random and wrote ‘Irony’ down the margin in red biro. In the fly-leaf he scribbled anagrams of his name. Air and an arid nadir, a drain, a radian.
He decided to go and see Gladys.
She
would understand.
On his way he was ambushed from behind a gravestone by Rundell.
‘Ha, ha! It’s Woody Nightshade!’
‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Tarty. Only you would know about something as disgusting as the Biscuit Game.’
‘Takes one to know
‘Oh God! How did you find out? Do you think Headman knows?’
Adrian memorised all the replies and reproduced them as faithfully as he could.
And then the authorities had struck back.
Adrian’s Housemaster, Tickford, rose to his feet after lunch that same day, as did the other eleven Housemasters in the other eleven Houses.
‘All copies of this magazine will be collected from studies by the prefects before Games this afternoon and destroyed. Anyone found in possession of a copy after three o’clock will be severely punished.’
Adrian had never seen Tickford look so furious. He wondered if he could possibly have guessed that
Bollocks!
had originated in his House.
He and Tom had handed their two copies in cheerfully.
‘There you go, Hauptmann Bennett-Jones,’ said Adrian, ‘we have also an edition of
The Trial
, by the notorious Jew, Kafka. Berlin would appreciate it, I am thinking, if this too was added to the bonfire. Also the works of that decadent lesbian Bolshevik, Jane Austen.’
‘You’d better watch it, Healey. You’re on the list. If you had anything to do with this piece of shit then you are in trouble.’
‘Thank you, Sargent. You needn’t take up any more of our valuable time. I’m sure you have many calls of a similar nature to make in the neighbourhood.’
But for all the sensational impact of the magazine, Adrian felt somehow a sense of anti-climax. His article would never make a shred of difference to anything. He hadn’t exactly expected open warfare in the form-rooms, but it was depressing to realise that if he and Bullock and the others were exposed tomorrow they would be expelled, talked about for a while and then completely forgotten. Boys were cowardly and conventional. That’s why the system worked, he supposed.
He sensed too that if he came across the article in later life, as a twenty-year-old, he would shudder with embarrassment at the pretension of it. But why should his future self sneer at what he was now? It was terrible to know that time would lead him to betray everything he now believed in.
What I am now is
right
, he told himself. I will never see things as clearly again, I will never understand everything as fully as I do at this minute.
The world would never change if people got sucked into it.
He tried to explain his feelings to Tom, but Tom was not in communicative mood.
‘Seems to me there’s only one way to change the world,’ said Tom.
‘And what’s that?’ asked Adrian.
‘Change yourself.’
‘Oh, that’s bollocks!’
‘And
Bollocks!
tells the truth.’
He went to the library and read up his symptoms in more detail. Cyril Connolly, Robin Maugham, T.C. Worsley, Robert Graves, Simon Raven: they had all had their Cartwrights. And the novels! Dozens of them.
Lord Dismiss Us, The Loom of Youth, The Fourth of June, Sandel, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Hill
…
He was one of a long line of mimsy and embittered middle-class sensitives who disguised their feeble and decadent lust as something spiritual and Socratic.
And why not? If it meant he had to end his days on some Mediterranean island writing lyric prose for Faber and Faber and literary criticism for the
New Statesman
, running through successions of houseboys and ‘secretaries’, getting sloshed on Fernet Branca and having to pay off the Chief of Police every six months, then so be it. Better than driving to the office in the rain.
In a temper, he took out a large Bible, opened it at random and wrote ‘Irony’ down the margin in red biro. In the fly-leaf he scribbled anagrams of his name. Air and an arid nadir, a drain, a radian.
He decided to go and see Gladys.
She
would understand.
On his way he was ambushed from behind a gravestone by Rundell.
‘Ha, ha! It’s Woody Nightshade!’
‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Tarty. Only you would know about something as disgusting as the Biscuit Game.’
‘Takes one to know
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