DailyOJ

My half-hearted attempt at mixing both Dorian Gray and Lord of the Flies.

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. Though he had taken off his sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.

'Hi!' it said, 'wait a minute!'

The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering.

'Wait a minute,' the voice said, 'I got caught up.'

The fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an automatic gesture that made the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties.

The voice spoke again.

'I can't hardly move with all these creeper things.'

The owner of the voice came backing out of the undergrowth so that twigs scratched on a greasy wind-breaker. The naked crooks of his knees were plump, caught and scratched by thorns. He bent down, removed the thorns carefully, and turned round. He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat.

He came forward, searching out safe lodgements for his feet, and then looked up through thick spectacles.

'Where's the man with the megaphone?'

The fair boy shook his head.

'This is an island. At least I think it's an island. That's a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren't any grown-ups anywhere.' The fat boy looked startled.

'There was that pilot. But he wasn't in the passenger tube, he was up in the cabin in front.'

The fair boy was peering at the reef through screwed-up eyes. 'All them other kids,' the fat boy went on. 'Some of them must have got out. They must have, mustn't they?'

'What's your name?'

'Ralph.'

The fat boy waited to be asked his name in turn but this proffer of acquaintance was not made; the fair boy called Ralph smiled vaguely, stood up, and began to make his way once more towards the lagoon. The fat boy hung steadily at his shoulder.

'I expect there's a lot more of us scattered about. You haven't seen any others have you?'

Ralph shook his head and increased his speed. Then he tripped over a branch and came down with a crash, he lifted himself up dusting himself down, exclaiming ‘my Auntie told me not to run’, but the other boy wasn’t listening. Ralph looked up from his dirty shirt to see what the other boy was looking at. A small building in the distance, enveloped in a silvery light which flickered and radiated the sun’s rays, it was encased in a bed of untamed flowers which had grown for years. The boys were mesmerized by the rich colours that embraced the small bungalow as they walked hypnotically across the shoreline out of the forest.

The shore was fledged with palm trees. These stood or leaned or reclined against the light and their green feathers were a hundred feet up in the air. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coco-nuts and palm saplings.

When they approached the building, they realized the building was more vast and overgrown than they initially realized. The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Earley Gaten could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs. His calmness was disturbed by the two visitors who trudged into the studio curiously, their shadows were a constant attachment to their slow pace and remained permanent in comparison to the fantastic shadows of the birds in flight whicih flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains. They had not yet seen him, and if he remained hidden behind his large armchair, he would refrain from disturbing them back until it was absolutely necessary.

Piggy had gathered the unfortunate nickname from Ralph, he shook his head, put on his flashing glasses and looked across at Ralph as they walked slowly into the studio.

‘Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead.'

Ralph pulled himself out of the water, stood facing Piggy, and considered this unusual problem.

Piggy persisted.

'This is a studio, isn't it?'

'I climbed a rock,' said Ralph slowly, 'and 1 think this is an studio.'

'They're all dead,' said Piggy, 'an' this is an studio. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know-'

His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist. 'We may stay here till we die.'

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of the crash echoed like a distant organ into the studio. The boys’ conversation ran dry of its own accord as they silently walked through the corridor; at the end it opened like an estuary into another room where there sat a huge velvet armchair, but immediately the boys were struck by the room on the right hand side, it was clustered with props and objects. 'If it really is a studio -' 'What's that?'

Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the clustered room. Something creamy lay among the fruit. 'A stone.'

'No. A shell.'

Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement, they had forgotten that they were trespassing, in all the madness and their delirium they had forgotten the basic principle of territory, but at this moment, the object of still life held their undivided attention.

'S'right. It's a shell. I seen one like that before. On someone's back wall. A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come. It's ever so valuable-'

Near to Ralph's elbow, a palm sapling leaned out over the lagoon. Indeed, the weight was already pulling a lump from the poor soil and soon it would fall. He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water, while the brilliant fish flicked away on this side and that. Piggy leaned dangerously.

'Careful! You'll break it-' 'Shut up.'

Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a worthy plaything: but the vivid phantoms of his daydream still interposed between him and Piggy, who in this context was an irrelevance. The palm sapling, bending, pushed the shell across the weeds. Ralph used one hand as a fulcrum and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping, and Piggy could make a grab.

Now the shell was no longer a thing seen but not to be touched, Ralph too became excited. Piggy babbled:

'- a conch; ever so expensive. I bet if you wanted to buy one, you'd have to pay pounds and pounds and pounds - he had it on his garden wall, and my auntie-'

‘Shh,’ said Ralph, after hearing the screeching of a chair…the armchair, they thought. Ralph turned around to see the gallery then expanded into a far greater space, the size of a small warehouse, open and white. The two boys crept further into the space.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. Piggy had to stifle his laughter, triggered by the melodramatic actions of the artist, they both stood behind the arches leading into this room unsure of what this zany artist was going to do next.

Suddenly Lord Earley’s voice echoed from behind them, startling them, but he didn’t seem to care for these visitors, he saw them as weak, their limping shadows convinced him they would be better as allies.

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Earley languidly walking past the two boys. "You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford, as he did so he noticed the two boys. "No, I won't send it anywhere – do we have guests?’

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement, seeming to ignore the latter question, through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it." Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.