Boys and Girls Come Out to Play by Nigel Dennis Read Free Book Online Page B

full of grey fluff, and bird-seed that had fallen there when he fed the pigeons outside the Vatican. His passport and wallet were examined, and after some conference Divver was asked to wait quietly for half an hour, which he did, since there was nothing else to do. Then he was escorted to the railroad station in a sedan with smoked windows and put on the train to Genoa. Just before the train pulled out a man appeared at the compartment with Divver’s suitcases, which had been beautifully packed, as by a valet, and even contained things which were not Divver’s but the hotel’s. The notebook, with Divver’s reflections on man, was the only thing missing: presumably it was now being checked by a skilled translator. Two detectives, two soldiers of an Alpine regiment, and a policeman travelled with Divver to Genoa.
    At Genoa, Divver was taken straight to the quay and put aboard a slow Italian fruit ship that was leaving for New York in a few hours. Everything had been done so quietly and efficiently that at first the only evidence to leak out of Italy was a photograph that an American camera reporter in Genoa managed to make as Divver was approaching the gangplank. Radioed to New York, this photograph gave merely the customary furry outlines of the figures involved: but in its true glory—as it reached America by fast boat a few days before Divver—it told a story that was heroic and tinged with bitterness for anyone who was predisposed so to read it. It showed four Italian policemen, with the degraded faces of hirelings, walking stiffly toward the gangplank; also walking, in the centre, was Divver, his head bent and a frowning, dogged expression on his face. Compared with the policemen’s, his clothes looked loose and untidy, but in a freeish sort of way; his walk was more an idealist’s trudge than a criminal’s slouch. Off to one side of the picture (this was specially admired) was an Italian match-seller—a fat old lady with a black, sequined shawl, who was looking at Divver with an expression that was pained and maternal, but otherwise vague enough to be interpreted in a variety of ways (“She is 2,000 years of history” was one comment). In the background was the Genoa customs-house, a Romanesque structure.
    Divver knew nothing about the photograph until he reached New York. The trip on the old boat took two weeks, and for the first few days Divver was too seasick to talk even to himself. He spent the rest of the voyage in miserable humiliation. His week in Rome already stood out in his mind too clearly to be faced; he gnashed his teeth over what seemed to him now his juvenile antics. He could hardly bear to think of the things he had written in his notebook; he could only thank God that it had fallen into the hands of foreigners. Wherever he was, alone in his cabin or walking the little deck, he blushed tohis ears when he thought of how dreadful it would be if any of his friends should get wind of what had happened. Even at school, he had never put himself into the childish position of having to be ejected for silliness. What must the reporters have thought? What must Mussolini have thought? What would the sneering youths of his college days think? How would he explain his returning after only a week abroad? One thing, he decided, was certain: he could never again face the editor who had trusted him so generously and believed in his future as a thoughtful man. From there, Divver’s thoughts flew in all directions: since it was a mistake for him ever to have been educated, he would not even stop over in New York, but would go straight home and settle down quietly in his native suburb, and devote his life to the simplest forms of social help, as a doctor, a fruit-grower, or a labourer on the railroad; anything crude through which he might achieve wisdom without the risk of ridicule. Then, halfway across the Atlantic, the obvious course suddenly became apparent: he would become a schoolteacher.
    At New York