The Deconstruction of an English Gentleman

by 'quite musical and curiously soothing'

Badger Old Place, Arley Holt, Berkshire, august 1902.

1.

It had been a most uncomfortable scene. His mother, sitting on the sofa in the library, her lips tight and anger shooting thunderbolts from her eyes. His father doing the talking while pacing the floor. Alistair himself standing in front of the fireplace with his hands hidden behind his back, taking in the cannonade of words and avoiding speaking as long as possible. Not until his father ran out of breath and anger, and before his mother had a chance to take over, Alistair cut through:

"Honoria St. John is an affected, twisted person. I have never made her any promises and I swear I have never given her any reason to believe I had any intentions at all. I intend to go to Paris as soon as possible and I don't intend to return in the immediate future."

Both parents stared at him. He looked haughtily back. Neither of them nor anybody else knew that he actually intended to go to Palestine and had no intention of returning at all.

"Are you hereby saying that there is no kind of understanding between you and Honoria St. John?" His father's mistrust was not to be mistaken.

"That is what I am telling you. I have never liked her, she is a vain and selfconcious goose and I am certain her horrible mother has urged her to pursue me..."

"You are talking about one of my nearest and dearest friends," his mother reminded him.

"That doesn't do the matter any good. It doesn't change it either." Alistair snapped.

William Hughenfort decided to attack the case from a different point of view:

"Do you realise that Honoria St. John has been taken ill for more than a week at Justice Hall because of you?"

"I've had no chance of escaping that knowledge," Alistair complained.

"Her well-being is not of my concern and it is not my doing that she has chosen to inflict herself on the family at Justice. Her so-called illness is all made up in her silly little head and I'm terribly sorry that the duke and his family have to put up with her."

Alistair's father tried a new approach:

"You do realise what this means to your good name and reputation -- well, to all of our family. No decent young woman will ever dare to be involved with you if this comes out. Think of your sister, of your brother..."

"I don't give a fig for what decent young women may think of me, I have no intentions of marrying whatsoever. And concerning my sister and brother; well... James Matterson has been in love with Rose since he was seven and she with him, so I see no reason to worry. And Ralph... honestly, even if I was a shining example like Henry Hughenfort of Justice Hall, no one with a right mind will ever enter into marriage with my brother when the time comes."

His parents exchanged glances in silent and shocked conversation. His mother touched her dry eyes with a creased handkerchief and sighed:

"We never should have let him spend so much time with Marsh Hughenfort. He has completely corrupted his mind. Never marry?" She sounded deeply worried.

"What about this estate? The family name?" his father asked.

Alistair shrugged:

"I'm quite certain that Rose and James, when time comes, will produce a steady row of heirs and I will choose one of them to take over after me. Honestly, I'm not worried, why should you be?"

When he saw his father's face grow deeply violet, Alistair realised he had gone too far.

"Get out!" William Hughenfort gasped. "Get out, before..."

Alistair bowed stiffly and left the library.

Algernon had Victory saddled when Alistair came into the stables. He mounted the horse and set it into a canter across the fields away from the house while sorting out his feelings. That he didn't care about his own honour and reputation was far from the truth; the future destiny of Badger Old Place did weigh upon him. It was simply too much that that stupid goose...

The picture of Honoria St. John rose in his mind. Her large blue eyes, golden curls and her slim, erect figure... Honoria was the dream come true to any young man -- but Alistair had never cared about her. She was false and scheming and had always been. He had known her all his life. And if he had been more aware, her intentions would have been clear to him a long time ago. She had appeared by his side with an enchanting smile at numerous social occasions. Whenever he entered a room with a piano, Honoria was seated at it, letting her slim fingers dance over the keys while she shot him glances below her eyelashes. She had never missed an opportunity to make him sign himself to her programme and he had obeyed, becaused he was brought up to respect a lady's wishes. She had smiled and cooed and strutted herself -- and he simply had not seen it coming. His mind had been elsewhere. In Palestine. With Marsh. Honoria St. John had hit him like a sledgehammer.

He let Victory gallop, left the fields of Badger Old Place to enter the path across the hills of Justice Hall.

Behind Honoria Alistair felt the ambitious prescence of her mother. True, Mrs. St. John was a close friend of his mother. His mother's friends, sisters and female cousins had always filled Badger Old Place to its limits at any given occasion, their shrill voices and affected laughter echoing between the old walls. Sometimes he felt he had grown up in a hostile environment of frills and laces, whispering, giggling and indolent smiles behind his back. Understandably his father had escaped at any given opportunity. Alas, he had forgotten to take his oldest son along.

Alistair's friendship with Marsh, his grand cousin and the second son of the duke, had opened the doors of the neighbouring Justice Hall for him. Here he took shelter when the reign of women in his home became too much. Marsh, too, he had known forever, but their friendship began to grow shortly before Marsh went to Eton. Alistair and his sister Rose was sent to Justice Hall while their parents spent some time in France. The idea was that Alistair should strike up a friendship with Marsh' weakly brother Lionel, who was a year younger than Alistair. But it was the almost 12-year old Marsh and 7-year old Alistair who in each other found a kindred spirit. While Rose and Lionel played in the nursery, Alistair and Marsh explored the secret stairs and hallways of Justice Hall.

Especially one moment he clearly remembered. They had investigated a narrow and dark spiralling staircase all the way from the basement, working their way up inside the deep walls until they came out on the roof into the bright sunlight. All dusty and sweaty they sat in the shadow of the embrasure, gazing at the blue sky.

"How is Eton?" Alistair wanted to know. He was destined to go there, too.

"I'll tell you when I come home for Christmas," Marsh answered, looking at him with his inscrutable dark eyes and Alistair's heart caught an extra beat: Marsh expected them to continue as friends...

Side by side they had looked at the green, hilly landscape surrounding Justice Hall.

"Just like the hymn, isn't it?" Marsh had said and Alistair knew what he meant: in England's green and pleasant land.

"I'm a soldier," Marsh had continued. "We are soldiers in our family, you know. I don't belong here."

Alistair was confused. What did he mean?

"I think I will become an explorer," Marsh thoughtfully said. "There is a whole wide world out there and I want to see it. There must be more to it than green and pleasant hills. Don't you ever want to run away?"

The question had escaped Alistair, who thought of his going to justice Hall as his running away. Marsh had seen it, laughed at him, reached out and messed up his black curls:

"Don't worry old boy, I won't run away without you!"

A rush of feelings overwhelmed Alistair: a great joy mixed with the notion that Marsh did laugh a bit at him - and the tingling expectations of great and dangerous adventures ahead. He dashed at his newfound friend and the two boys rolled on the sunheated roof in a brotherly fight, which Marsh naturally won. Then he got up on his feet, reached out for Alistair's hand and pulled him up. The lunch-gong was near and they had to go wash and change their clothes.

Alistair slowed the pace of the horse and let it walk up the next hill, while he let his memory go back to the first christmas after Marsh went to Eton. He hed been tense, full of fear that Marsh had outgrown him. But as soon as Alistair entered the great hall, Marsh came running down the stairs, had caught his arm and dragged him up into the Greene Library. He had had so much to tell.

And Alistair had listened. Whole sentences still rang in his mind as had they just been spoken. Especially this:

"Gentlemen... that's what we're brought up to be, you and I," Marsh had said with a faraway look the first night. And then he had continued:

"I'm not quite certain that's what I want to be."

That christmas the world of books was opened to Alistair's starving mind. And it was Marsh, who opened it. They had spent hours in the Greene Library, exploring the classics Marsh had been introduced to at Eton. Juicy parts of Shakespeare, roman warlords and gallic wars had nurtured their fantasies. Reluctantly they had taken part in meals and a minimum of social gatherings. They had restaged famous battles in the armoury, fought with heavy swords and shields in earnest play...

One day, during one of these battles, Iris showed up in the doorway behind Marsh. A rangy girl af Marsh's age with a far too adult look in her eyes to Alistair's taste.

"Oh no, a girl!" Alistair had sighed and lowered his sword. Marsh had turned and looked:

"Oh, that's just Iris. She's allright, she's not a real girl."

That Alistair didn't quite grasp, but when the three of them shortly afterwards began to rehearse a scene of a play by Shakespeare up in the library, he began to understand. Iris lacked all the cloying and coquettish manners he usually associated with girls. She was as straigthforward as any boy and her grotesque and wild imagination contributed to make the remainder of the Christmas pass in a magical light.

One evening they staged a play for the houseguests. Marsh and Iris had rummaged the house for costumes and Alistair had secretly rejoiced when looking in the mirror, dressed in a long floral shirt and heavy woollen cape. The clothes had felt strangely familiar and it was with a sigh of regret that he let it disappear into the dressing up-chest after the performance.

Alistair brought the horse to a halt on the hilltop. Below him was The Circles, the ancient stone monument that had a special place in his heart. And in Marsh's and Iris'...

He got off the horse and walked downhill to the mossgrown stones, letting the horse wander and sat down on that boulder he regarded as his. His mind went back to one special midsummer...

He had been deeply disappointed when Marsh did not come home for Easter, but choose to spend it with a schoolmate in Wiltshire. But when Marsh returned shortly before midsummer, his head was filled with theories of The Circles, inspired by his Easter-visit at Stonehenge. Iris had been at Justice, too, and the three of them had planned and carried out a secret nocturnal excursion to The Circles on midsummer's night to test Marsh's theories of The Circles being a temple of the sun just like Stonehenge.

It was the 8-year-old Alistair's first nightly escape. He had been tired and the two older children had almost carried him for the last two miles. But they had reached their goal and had eaten their stolen fare from Mrs. Butter's larder, sitting on the three boulders with Marsh in the middle. It had been bitterly cold, and when the sun finally rose, it threw neither shine nor shadow where Marsh had expected it to. The way home had seemed endless and they knew that a mighty telling-off awaited at the end. Still, the nightly hardships and the experience of intimacy between the three of them shone in a magical light, both to the 8-year-old then and to the 21-year-old Alistair now, as he sat there, staring at The Circles without really seeing them.

Alistair had been kept in for the two following weeks. It was worth it, although he longed for Marsh so he thought his heart would break. And then, late one night he woke up, when a hand covered his mouth -- and there was Marsh with cheerfully gleaming eyes. He held a lighted candle in his hand and placed it at the bedside table.

"Have they been rough to you?" he whispered and Alistair just shrugged his shoulders. It was all forgotten now.

"I'm sorry I've brought you into this mess. It is my fault and my responsibility. My father nearly had an apoplectic seizure," Marsh continued.

"Iris has been sent home and I'm not allowed to go outside for the next week. I'm not allowed to see you until then, either."

"Same here," Alistair had whispered. And then they had just gazed at each other, bursting with suppressed joy of reunion.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Marsh said and took out a package from the dark cape he wore. He unpacked it on Alistair's blanket:

"With the unknowing compliments of Mrs. Butter..."

With Marsh sitting at the foot of his bed, the two boys enjoyed Mrs. Butter's muffins. Afterwards Marsh picked up the crumbs carefully, wrapped them into the cloth he had brought the muffins in and hid it under the cape.

"I'd better be off now... sleep tight, Ali!"

Marsh blew out the candle, his lips touched Alistair's brow and he was gone.

To more times during their confinement Marsh showed up during the night to keep up the spirits of his little comrade. When their time was done, the two boys promised their parents not to embark into nightly outings again and they kept their promise. They were allowed to spend the remains of the summer together.

The day before Marsh returned to Eton, the two boys mixed blood during a solemn ceremony at The Circles -- this time in broad daylight.

Alistair let his hand slide across Marsh' empty boulder, Then he rose and called his horse back. What would Marsh say, if he knew the situation his comrade-in-arms and faithful friend now was in?

Alistair winced: Marsh would laugh out loud, shake his head and slap Alistair's back, telling him to get himself out of that mess, the sooner the better.

And he would be absolutely right. Alistair sat up and turned Victory resolutely back towards Badger Old Place, with Marsh on his mind.