The Go-Between

Leo is bitterly disappointed at the message he’s read. It had never crossed his mind that Marian and Ted were in love. He would never have expected “Marian the Virgin of the Zodiac” to “sink so low” as to be “soft” and “soppy.” Leo thrusts the letter deep into the envelope and seals it, “to cover [Marian’s] shame.” With the above in mind, he resolves that it is still his duty to deliver the letter.

As Leo heads towards the farm, he notices how the sun has dried out the land and made the water shallower. The strength of the sun softens his attitude towards Marian. “Spooning” no longer seems the “most damaging activity that a human being could engage in” and he realizes it must have something to do with “the helplessness of Nature.”

Leo arrives at the farm, where Ted greets him with a “half mocking, half playful” salute. Leo hands Ted the letter before informing him that he will no longer be able to bring letters because of Marcus’s recovery. Leo hasn’t told Marian yet, and Ted says, “she won’t know what to do, you see, no more shall I.” Leo asks what they did before they had him to take the letters; Ted laughs and just says, “it wasn’t so easy then.”

Ted asks Leo whether he would want Marian to stop liking him (Leo). When Leo says no, Ted asks him where Leo would “feel it” if she did. Leo, “half hypnotized,” puts his hand on his heart, to which Ted responds, “So you have a heart.” He warns Leo that Marian won’t be the same if Leo doesn’t take the letters. Ted says she’ll cry; it’s not that hard to make her cry, and that she had cried previously when she couldn’t see him. “Do you want her to cry?” asks Ted. He thinks Leo considers him just a “rough chap.”

The thought of Marian crying brings tears to Leo’s eyes and he is trembling, troubled by Ted’s “vehemence.” Ted invites him into the house out of the sun. Leo tries to change the subject, telling Ted that he had expected to find him in the field earlier. Ted informs Leo that he came back to look after Smiler the horse, who is going to have a foal.

Leo asks why Smiler is having a foal, and Ted says, “it’s Nature.” He tells Leo “between you and me … she did a bit of spooning.” The word strikes Leo “like a blow.” Leo didn’t realize animals could “spoon”—he didn’t think they were “silly” enough for that. Ted tells him that he won’t think spooning is so “silly” when he’s older.

Leo asks Ted questions about marriage and “spooning.” If you spoon someone, he asks, does that generally mean you will get married? “Generally,” replies Ted. “Could you spoon with someone without marrying them?” asks Leo. “Yes, I suppose so,” says Ted. Leo asks about marriage coming before “spooning,” which Ted thinks wouldn’t be “a very lover-like thing to do.”

Ted tells Leo it wouldn’t be “natural” to “spoon” someone without loving them. Thinking of Smiler and her foal to come, Leo asks if “spooning” between people means they will have a baby. Ted says it isn’t the same for people and for horses: “Nature doesn’t use ‘em as she does us.”

Ted suggests that that is enough questions for one day. He doesn’t want to “go putting ideas” into Leo’s head. Leo says he’s ready to know more—he’s nearly thirteen. Ted agrees to tell Leo “all about spooning” but only if Leo will continue to deliver the letters. Leo has started to realize the force of attraction between Ted and Marian, comparing it to that of a magnet, but he finds it mystifying.

Ted reminds Leo that he has forgotten to slide down the straw-stack. He tells Leo to go and do so while he writes a letter for Marian.