On his hands is the smell of horse and harness. Its components derive from leather, saddle soap, sweat, hooves, horsehair, horse breath, grass, oats, mud, blankets, saliva, dung and the smell of various metals when moisture has condensed upon them.
He brings one of his hands to his face to savour the smell. He has noticed that sometimes a trace of it lingers until the evening—even when he hasn’t ridden since early morning.
The horse and harness smell is the antithesis of the cowshed smell. Each can only be properly defined by reference to the other. The shed smell means milk, cloth, figures of women squatting hunched up and small against the cow flank, liquid shit, mulch, warmth, pink hands and udders almost the same colour, the absolute absence of secrecy and the names of the cows: Fancy, Pretty, Lofty, Cloud, Pie, Little-eyes.
The horse and harness smell is associated for him with the eminent nature of his own body (like suddenly being aware of his own warmth), with pride—for he rides well and his uncle praises him, with the hair of his pony’s mane and with his anticipation of a man’s world.
He knows some of the terms of this world but he believes that all of them refer to something which nobody ever mentions. He assumes that the men around him have, for their own reasons, a need for secrecy comparable to his own. When he enters their world—and follows Captain Elwes’ hounds—he will learn their secrets.
MISS HELEN
Between the ages of two and five the boy has three governesses. The last one is called Miss Helen.
In the schoolroom in the wing of the farm furthest from the kitchen and the yard, there are no men; there is only the boy. He is sitting at the high desk, his feet dangling in the air, reading out loud. She is in an armchair which she has turned round so that she can gaze out of the window.
When it seems that her attention is entirely taken up by what she can see through the window, he deliberately makes a mistake so as to re-attract her attention. Sometimes his mistakes are unintentional.
… all thrush summer the birds were singing.
Thrush?
Yes, the speckly bird.
Thrush summer?
She gets up from the chair, smooths the front of her dress where it is pleated round her tiny waist and comes behind him to look at the book.
All through summer. Thrush indeed! OUGH not RUSH.
She laughs. He laughs and in laughing throws his head back against her dress.
It was a good mistake, a thrush is a sort of bird.
But not a sort of preposition.
Falling in love at five or six, although rare, is the same as falling in love at fifty. One may interpret one’s feelings differently, the outcome may be different, but the state of feeling and of being is the same.
A pre-condition is necessary for a five-year-old boy to fall in love. He must have lost his parents or, at least, lost any close contact with them, and no foster-parents should have taken their place. Similarly, he must have no close friends or brothers or sisters. Then he is eligible.
Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover—except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give. Most children are surrounded by their rights (their right to indulgence, to consolation, etc.): and so they do not and cannot fall in love. But if a child—as a result of circumstances—comes to realize that such rights as he does enjoy are not fundamental, if he has recognized, however inarticulately, that happiness is not something that can be assured and promised but is something that each has to try to find for himself, if he is aware of being essentially alone, then he may find himself anticipating pure, gratuitous and continual gifts offered by another and the state of that anticipation is the state of being in love. You may ask: but what does he have to offer in exchange? The boy, like a man, offers himself—not altogether impossibly. What is impossible, or at least very improbable, is that his beloved will ever recognize either his offer or his anticipation for what they are.
What—he asks—is a preposition?
A preposition is part of grammar. It’s always in front of a noun and it tells you what the noun is doing.
But—you protest (as she too would protest, with vaguer words)—a boy of five is not sexually developed and the basis of falling in love is sexual.
Every morning he hears her washing in her bedroom. Every morning he considers entering her room and surprising her. He could enter on the excuse of being frightened or of some fabricated need, but to do so would be to appeal, to claim as a child: and because he is in love with her, his lover’s pride prevents this.
At night in bed, alone, he examines his body part by part to discover the source of the mystery which inflames him. (Her presence, as now when she is standing behind him and he still has his head against her dress, makes his heart beat faster and his limbs feel weak, as after a bath that is too hot.) He examines his nose, his ears, his armpits, his nipples, his navel, his anus, his toes. Finally he arrives at his erect penis, which, he already knows, will afford him a half-answer. He caresses it to bring on the waves of familiar sweet pleasure. The frequency of the waves increases until suddenly they turn to pain. He categorizes the pleasure as a good pain because the only other sensations he knows which approach the intensity of this one are indeed pains.
Can we do some singing, he asks.
Unlike his previous governess, Miss Helen, who is unusually lazy, appears to have no strict programme for the lessons she gives to the boy. They do whatever suggests itself. Instead of having three distinct and formal lessons, they pass the morning together. For the boy this establishes a kind of equality between them. It allows her to moon.
She goes to the piano and sits down on the round stool that can twirl round like a roundabout.
Let me turn you, he says, let me turn you.
From behind her he puts a hand on either hip and pushes. She lifts her feet off the ground so that her shoes disappear beneath her skirts. Slowly she revolves.
He has a face like a monkey, darling, but with deep dark eyes. He’s a funny little fellow, he really is. He keeps on looking at you and in the end you have to turn away. I’ve no idea what goes on in his head. In two days’ time she is going to London for a week.
He has noticed (and considers it unique to her) that her clothes always feel warm.
She puts her feet down.
What would your uncle say if he could see us now?
He never comes to this end of the house. And if he did, he would come on his horse and look through the window.
Involuntarily she glances towards the window.
Let me turn you again.
No.
The no is almost petulant.
Then sing your song, he says, the one I always like.
Which one do you mean?
The one about Helen, your song.
She laughs and touches the side of his head.
Anybody might think that was the only one I could sing.
Her voice is thin, not dissimilar from a child’s. When she is singing, it seems to him that they are the same size and a well-matched couple. He no longer listens to the words of the song (‘I would I were where Helen lies…’) partly because he knows them too well and partly because he does not believe in them. The words thus discounted, he hears her singing her song, in the same sense as a bird sings its song. Whilst she sings, he might be asking her: Helen, will you marry me? And whilst she sings, she might be answering: Yes. But he would not believe it, because he is fully aware that in consideration of everything in the world, except themselves, it is impossible.