The Go-Between

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Book: Read The Go-Between for Free Online
Authors: L. P. Hartley
Tags: Fiction, Literary
suggesting that I was not able to
look after myself. It would have been like pointing out some
physical defect. The law that one must consume one’s own smoke was
absolute, and no one subscribed to it more whole-heartedly than I.
A late-comer to school, I had uncritically accepted all its
standards. I was a conformist: it never occurred to me that because
I suffered, there was something wrong with the system, or with the
human heart.
      One act of consideration, however, my room-mates
showed me and I still remember it with gratitude. It was our custom
to talk for some few minutes after lights out, simply because to do
so was against the rules; and if any of the five failed to join in
he was pointedly reminded of it and told he was a funk, and letting
down the good name of the dorm. Whether my sobs were audible I
don’t know, but I dared not trust my voice to speak, and nobody
censured my silence.
     
      The next day at break I wandered about by myself,
keeping close to the wall, for there, at any rate, I could not be
surrounded. I was keeping a weather eye open for the gang (where
there had been nobody, suddenly there were six) when a boy I hardly
knew came up with an odd look on his face and said:
      “Have you heard the news?”
      “What news?” I had hardly spoken to anybody.
      “About Jenkins and Strode.” He looked at me
narrowly.
      “What is it?”
      “They were out on the roofs last night and Jenkins
slipped and Strode tried to hold him but he couldn’t and was pulled
off too. They’re both in the San with concussion of the brain and
their people have been sent for. Jenkins’s mater and pater have
just arrived. They came in a cab with the blinds drawn down and
Jenkins’s mater is in black already. I thought you might be
interested.”
      I said nothing and the boy, with a backward glance
at me, went off whistling. I felt faint and didn’t recognize
myself: it was so extraordinary not to be afraid of the gang any
more. But I was afraid—afraid of what they might do to me in case I
was a murderer. The bell went and I began to walk towards the door
in the corner, and two of the boys in my dorm came up and shook
hands with me and said “Congrats” with respect in their faces. So
then I knew it was all right.
     
      Afterwards I was quite a hero, for nobody, it turned
out, had much liking for Jenkins and Strode, though nobody had
raised a finger to stop them ragging me. Even their four chums who
used to help them to knock me about said they only did it because
Jenkins and Strode made them. Jenkins and Strode had told everyone
about the curses, meaning to make a fool of me, and what the whole
school wanted to know was: did I mean to use the third curse? Even
the boys in the top classroom spoke to me about this. It was
generally agreed that it would be more sporting not to, but that I
should be quite within my rights if I did: “Those chaps want a
lesson,” the head of the school told me. However, I didn’t use it.
I was secretly terrified at what I had done, and if it hadn’t been
for the current of public opinion running my way I might easily
have got into a morbid state about it. As it was, I devised a
number of spells intended to make the victims recover, but these I
did not enter in my diary, partly because they would have detracted
from the sense of utter triumph I was being encouraged to feel, and
partly because if they failed, my public reputation as a magician
would have suffered. Nor would it have been a popular move; for
during the few days that the boys’ lives hung in the balance, we
all went about in a subdued manner with long faces, but secretly
hoping for the worst. Ghoulish reports—faces under sheets, parents
in tears —were circulated, and the mood of tension and crisis
demanded an outlet in catastrophe. Of this it was cheated, but very
gradually; and during the drawn-out anticlimax I received many
rather rueful congratulations on my forbearance in not

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