And so he, Laurie, in those moods when nothing favoured him, when everyone’s hand was against him and his hand against theirs, insulated by the flawless circle of himself, he, too, enjoyed the pylon’s immunity, its power to be itself. Whatever stresses might be brought to bear on it, it didn’t care, nor, looking at it, did he, Laurie, care.
All that was over now; his companion was gone; and Laurie-the-pylon was no more.
Deprived of his second self he shrank, his imaginative life dwindled, and with it his other budding interests. An east-wind blight descended on his mind, dulling his vision, delaying his reactions. If he was spoken to, he didn’t always hear, and if he heard he didn’t always answer. ‘But you don’t listen!’ Susan would chide him, in exasperation, and his brother, who went to the same day-school, would defend him: ‘You see, he’s so tiny, his ears haven’t grown yet! They’re really little baby’s ears!’ Then Laurie would lunge out at him, and in the scuffle regain the sense of immediate contact with reality that he had lost.
His mother and father, oddly enough, took longer to notice the change in him, for he had always been more talked against than talking. In fact they might never have noticed it but for his end-of-term reports. These made them think, and one, from Laurie’s form-master, made them quite indignant.
‘I wonder what’s come over the boy,’ his father said, knitting his heavy brows and tapping his finger-tips against his teeth. ‘He used to be the clever one. Not quick and sharp like Victor, but thoughtful and original.’
‘I expect he’s going through a phase,’ his wife said, placidly.
‘Phase, indeed! He isn’t old enough for phases.’
‘You’d better speak to him, but if you do, be careful, darling. You know how sensitive he is.’
‘Sensitive my foot! I’m much more sensitive than he is. You ought to warn him to be careful.’
‘I only meant we don’t want anything to do with Oedipus,’ his wife said.
‘You shouldn’t spoil him, then. You should be much nastier to him than you are. I’ve more reason to worry about Oedipus than you have. Laurie might marry you, O.K., but he would murder me. It’s I who am to be pitied. No one ever pities fathers. No one ever pities Oedipus’s father, whom Oedipus bumped off. I think I shall expose Laurie on Mount Cithaeron, having first struck the toasting-fork through his toes.’
All the same, he put off ‘speaking’ to Laurie as long as he could, and when the time came he approached the subject warily.
‘Well, old man,’ he said, when he had got Laurie alone, ‘take a pew and tell me how you fared last term.’
Deliberately he seated himself at some distance, for fear the nearness of his large strong body might arouse the wrong kind of response and inflict a Freudian bruise.
‘Well,’ echoed Laurie, heavily, ‘I didn’t do very well, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re growing too fast, that’s the trouble,’ said his father. ‘It takes it out of you.’
‘I only grew an eighth of an inch last term. They measured me,’ Laurie added, almost as mournfully as if the measuring had been for his coffin.
Drat the boy, his father thought. He won’t use the loop-holes that I offer him.
He pulled at his moustache which, unlike the bronze hair greying on his head, had kept its golden colour. Proud of its ability to keep its ends up unaided, he wore it rather long, a golden bow arched across his mouth and reaching to the wrinkles where his smile began. Tugging it was a counter-irritant to emotional unease. But was such an adult masculine gesture quite suitable in front of a small boy?
‘How do you account for it, then?’ he asked, at last.
‘Account for what, Daddy?’ But Laurie knew.
‘Well, for your reports not being so good as they sometimes are.’
Laurie’s face fell.
‘Oh, weren’t they good?’
‘Not all that good. Mr. Sheepshanks——’ he stopped.
‘What did he say?’ The question seemed to be forced out of Laurie.
Mr. Sheepshanks had said that Laurie’s work was ‘disappointing’. How mitigate that adjective to a sensitive ear?
‘He said you hadn’t quite come up to scratch.’
‘I never was much good at maths,’ said Laurie, as though he had had a lifetime’s experience of them.
‘No, they were never your strong suit . . . And Mr. Smallbones——’
Laurie clasped his hands and waited.
Mr. Smallbones had said, ‘Seems to have lost his wish to learn.’ Well, so have I, his father thought, but I shouldn’t want to be told so.
‘He said . . . well, that Latin didn’t come easily to you. It didn’t to me, for that matter.’
‘It’s the irregular verbs.’
‘I know, they are the devil. Why should anyone want to learn what is irregular? Most people don’t need to learn it.’ He smiled experimentally at Laurie, who didn’t smile back. He unclasped his hands and asked wretchedly, but with a slight lift of hopefulness in his voice:
‘What did Mr. Armstrong say?’
Mr. Armstrong was Laurie’s form-master, and it was his cruel verdict that had rankled most with Laurie’s parents. It couldn’t be true! It had seemed a reflection on them too, a slur on their powers of parenthood, a genetic smear, a bad report on them. And it was indignation at this personal affront, as well as despair of finding further euphemisms, that made him blurt out Mr. Armstrong’s words.
‘He said you were dull but deserving.’
Laurie’s head wobbled on his too-plump neck and his face began to crinkle. Appalled, his father ran across to him and touched him on the shoulder, pressing harder than he knew with his big hand. ‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. When I was your age I had terrible reports, much worse than yours are. You’ve spoilt us, that’s what it is, by always having had such smashing ones. But now I’ve got some good news for you, so cheer up!’
Laurie raised his tear-stained face open-eyed to his father’s and set himself to listen. His father moved away from him and, drawing himself up to give the fullest effect to his announcement, said:
‘It doesn’t matter so much what these under-masters say, it’s what the Headmaster says that counts. Now the Headmaster says——’
Suddenly he forgot what the Headmaster had said, although he remembered that some parts of the report had best not be repeated. Reluctantly, for he meant to keep the incriminating document hidden, and believed he had its contents by heart, he pulled it out of his breast-pocket, ran his eyes over it, and began rather lamely:
‘Mr. Stackpole says, hm . . . hm . . . hm—just a few general remarks, and then: “Conduct excellent”. “Conduct excellent”,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve never had that said of you before. It’s worth all the others put together. I can’t tell you how pleased and proud I am.
He paused for the electrifying effect, but it didn’t come. Instead, Laurie’s face again began to pucker. For a moment he was speechless, fighting with his sobs; then he burst out miserably:
‘But anyone can be good!’
Trying to comfort him, his father assured him that this wasn’t true: very, very few people could be good, even he, Laurie’s own father, couldn’t, and those who could were worth their weight in gold. After a time he thought that he was making headway: Laurie’s sobs ceased, he seemed to be listening and at last he said: