'Was his body like yours?'
'How should I know?'?and he was suddenly shy. 'I was only a kid and the Mater's torn up every photograph of him she could lay her hands on. He was a hundred per cent Aryan all right and there was plenty of him as there certainly is of me?indeed there'll be too much of me if I continue swilling at this rate. Suppose we talk about your passports for a change.'
'Was he one in whom those who sought rest found fire, and fire rest?'
'I've not the least idea what you're talking about. Do you mean I'm such a one myself?' I do.' 'I've not the least idea ' Then he hesitated. 'Unless . . . no, you're daft8
as usual, and in any case we've spent more than enough time in dissecting my unfortunate parent. I brought him up to show you how much the Mater has to put up with, one has to make endless allowances for her and you mustn't take it amiss if she's unreasonable about you. She'd probably like you if she got the chance. There was something else that upset her at the time .. . I seem to be bringing out all the family skeletons in a bunch, still they won't go any further, and I feel like chattering to someone about everything, once in a way. I've never had anyone to talk to like you. Never, and don't suppose I ever shall. Do you happen to remember the youngest of us all, the one we called Baby?'
'Ah, that pretty Baby!' 'Well, a fortnight after we landed and while we were up at my grandfather's looking for a house, that poor kid died.'
'Die what of?' he exclaimed, suddenly agitated. He raised his knees and rested his chin on them. With his nudity and his polished duskiness and his strange-shaped head, he suggested an image crouched outside a tomb.
'Influenza, quite straightforward. It was going through the parish and he caught it. But the worst of it was the Mater wouldn't be reasonable. She would insist that it was sunstroke, and that he got it running about with no topi on when she wasn't looking after him properly in this very same Red Sea.'
'Her poor pretty Baby. So I killed him for her.'
'Cocoa! How ever did you guess that? It's exactly what she twisted it round
8. Foolish.
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THE OTHER BOAT / 2073
to. We had quite a time with her. Olive argued, grandfather prayed . . . and I could only hang around and do the wrong thing, as I generally do.'
'But she?she saw me only, running in the sun with my devil's head, and m'm m'm m'm all you follow me till the last one the tiny one dies, and she, she talking to an officer, a handsome one, oh to sleep in his arms as I shall in yours, so she forgets the sun and it strikes the tiny one. I see.'
'Yes, you see in a wrong sort of way'; every now and then came these outbursts which ought to be rubbish yet weren't. Wrong of course about his mother, who was the very soul of purity, and over Captain Armstrong, who had become their valued family adviser. But right over Baby's death: she actually had declared that the idle unmanly imp had killed him, and designedly. Of recent years she had not referred to the disaster, and might have forgotten it. He was more than ever vexed with himself for mentioning Cocoanut in the letter he had recently posted to her.
'Did I kill him for you also?'
'For me? Of course not. I know the difference between influenza and sunstroke, and you don't develop the last-named after a three weeks' interval.' 'Did I kill him for anyone?or for anything?' Lionel gazed into eyes that gazed through him and through cabin walls into
the sea. A few days ago he would have ridiculed the question, but tonight he was respectful. This was because his affection, having struck earthward, was just trying to flower. 'Something's worrying you? Why not tell me about it?' he said.
'Did you love pretty Baby?'
'No, I was accustomed to see him around but he was too small to get interested in and I haven't given him a thought for years. So all's well.' 'There is nothing between us then?' 'Why should there be?' 'Lionel?dare I ask you one more question?' 'Yes, of course.' 'It is about blood. It is the last of all the questions. Have you ever shed
blood?'
'No?oh, sorry, I should have said yes. I forgot that little war of mine. It goes clean out of my head between times. A battle's such a mess-up, you wouldn't believe, and this one had a miniature sandstorm raging to make confusion more confounded. Yes, I shed blood all right, or so the official report says. I didn't know at the time.' He was suddenly silent. Vividly and unexpectedly the desert surged up, and he saw it as a cameo,9 from outside. The central figure?a grotesque one?was himself going berserk, and close to him was a dying savage who had managed to wound him and was trying to speak.
'I hope I never shed blood,' the other said. 'I do not blame others, but for me never.' 'I don't expect you ever will. You're not exactly cut out for a man of war. All the same, I've fallen for you.'
He had not expected to say this, and it was the unexpectedness that so delighted the boy. He turned away his face. It was distorted with joy and suffused with the odd purplish tint that denoted violent emotion. Everything had gone fairly right for a long time. Each step in the stumbling confession had brought him nearer to knowing what the beloved was like. But an open
9. Vividly carved stone.
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2074 / E. M. FORSTER
avowal?he had not hoped for so much. 'Before morning I shall have enslaved him,' he thought, 'and he will begin doing whatever I put into his mind.' Even now he did not exult, for he knew by experience that though he always got what he wanted he seldom kept it, also that too much adoration can develop a flaw in the jewel. He remained impassive, crouched like a statue, chin on knees, hands round ankles, waiting for words to which he could
