The Secret History

Partly because 1 did not wish to be burdened with anyone's pity or contempt, I concealed the true circumstances of my stay.

Unwanted during the holidays by my glamorous, good-for nothing parents, I had decided to stay alone in Hampden (at an unspecified location) and work on my Greek, spurning, in my pride, their craven offers of financial help.

This stoicism, this Henrylike dedication to my studies and general contempt for the things of this world, won me admiration from all sides, particularly from Henry himself. 'I wouldn't mind being here myself this winter,' he said to me one bleak night late in November as we were walking home from Charles and Camilla's, our shoes sunk to the ankles in the sodden leaves that covered the path. 'The school is boarded up and the stoics in town close by three in the afternoon. Everything's white and empty and there's no noise but the wind. In the old days the snow would drift up to the eaves of the roofs, and people would be trapped in their houses and starve to death. They wouldn't be found until spring.' His voice was dreamy, quiet, but I was filled with uncertainty; in the winters where I lived it did not even snow.

The last week of school was a flurry of packing, typing, plane reservations and phone calls home, for everybody but me. I had no need to finish my papers early because I had nowhere to go; I could pack at my leisure, after the dorms were empty. Bu

Anything Bu

Somewhere, Bu

Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.'

'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.'

'I don't either,' Bu

'Do

'Bu

'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.'

'Is it in the dictionary?'

'Du

And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bu

He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in.

'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously.

'Thanks, thanks.'

'But don't you think you ought to mention John Do

'Oh, Do

Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bu

'Triple-spaced it,' said Bu

'These lines are about an inch apart.'

'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?'

Henry made a fu

'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said.

All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Do

Brusquely he asked me, since I didn't have anything to do, would I come over and help him pack? I said I would, and arrived to find him dumping the contents of entire drawers into suitcases, clothes everywhere. I reached up and carefully took a framed Japanese print from the wall and laid it down on his desk: 'Don't touch that,' he shouted, dropping his nightstand drawer on the floor with a bang and darting over to snatch up the print. 'That thing's two hundred years old.' As a matter of fact, I knew that it was no such thing, since I happened a few weeks before to have seen him carefully razoring it from a book in the library; I said nothing, but I was so irritated that I left immediately, amidst what gruff excuses his pride permitted him. Later, after he had gone, I found an awkward note of apology in my mailbox, wrapped around a paperback copy of the poems of Rupert Brooke and a box of Junior Mints.

Henry departed quickly and quietly. One night he told us he was leaving and the next day he was gone. (To St Louis? ahead to Italy? none of us knew.) Francis left the day after that and there were many elaborate and prolonged goodbyes – Charles, Camilla, and I standing by the side of the road, noses raw and ears half-frozen, while Francis shouted at us with the window rolled down and the motor idling and great clouds of white smoke billowing all around the Mustang for what must have been a good forty-five minutes.