A Javelin for Jonah (4 page)

“He shouldn’t be allowed at large,” said Lesley.

“He ought to be poisoned,” said Jerry.

“Well, don’t let the students hear you say so. There is more than one who might take the hint,” said Henry. “We’ve got quite a few nut cases here, you know.”

“I wish one of our psychopaths
would
lay him out,” said Lesley. “He came into my gym the other day and that silly little Carol took her eye off what she was doing and pulled a muscle because she didn’t make a proper landing. That’s the second one of my special squad he’s managed to lay out. He told Margot to rake the long-jump pit the other day, and she’s slipped a disc. This was before he managed to put Colin out of action. I was absolutely livid about it. ‘There goes the Chronos Vase, and it’s all your fault, you incompetent, poke-nosed, drunken idiot!’ I said to him. ‘Why on earth, if you
had
to interfere with the long-jump, couldn’t you get one of the men to rake the pit?’

“ ‘Oh, an osteopath will soon put the wench right,’ says Jonah, ‘or I’ll do a spot of manipulation on her myself, if you like.’ I was so furious with him that I picked up a jumping-rope and swung the leather-covered, sandbagged end of it at his head. He was actually grinning, you know, as though he’d said something clever. ‘I’d like to
kill
you!’ I said. ‘And I
would
kill you if I ever found you putting your filthy hands on one of the girls.’ What do
you
say?” she concluded, turning to Henry.

“
Do
your gym squad stand any chance of lifting the Chronos Vase?” asked Henry.

“Not now we’ve had these accidents.”

“Then I think,” said Henry, getting up from table, “that, if you
do
kill him, you are also entitled to dance on the remains.”

J
oynings had been established originally by a syndicate of do-gooders who had bought the house and its grounds and had drawn up the College constitution. Gascoigne Medlar was not, in actuality, its first Warden, although he boasted that the College was his own foundation. The first Warden had been appointed by the syndicate. He was a clergyman and a well-meaning idealist, unfitted by nature, upbringing and education to cope with the type of delinquent for whom the original Joynings had been planned. He lasted for nearly a year, but resigned when he had recovered in hospital from an attack by a homicidal member of the junior common room who had disliked his sermons on brotherly love.

Gascoigne Medlar had not been appointed to take his place. Instead, he had bought the house and grounds when the syndicate, acknowledging failure, had put the property up for sale, had retained such parts of the constitution as appeared advantageous, and had jettisoned the rest. The original students, boys from broken homes for the most part, had been admitted without charge. Gascoigne changed that. He was not interested in delinquents as such, but only in the delinquent but athletic children of wealthy parents. He advertised widely at first, and, when the response came, he charged high fees, having spent much of his own money on improvements. He also paid very high salaries in order to attract a first-class staff. If they turned out to be less than first-class, they went. There was only one exception. Jones, his relative by marriage, Jonah though he turned out to be, was allowed to stay on in spite of his misdemeanours. Staff and students complained, but Gascoigne Medlar was adamant.

“He is my dear wife’s only living relative,” he would explain. “She would return and haunt me if I ever turned poor Davy adrift. He has nobody in the world but me.”

“Doesn’t seem in character, old Gasbag taking a stand like that,” said Jerry to Hamish when he was discussing Jones’s latest misadventures. “You’d think, if only for his own sake and the reputation of the College, that he’d cut out the sentimental angle and get rid of the fellow. He’s been nothing but a trouble-maker and a nuisance ever since he’s been here. He spends a third of his time half-bottled, another third chasing the women—Ma Yale has complained more than once on behalf of the girls here—and the rest of his life laying out the best of our athletes through sheer damn interfering idiocy.”

“Perhaps Gassie feels that Jonah is the victim of his own weaknesses with regard to A and B,” said Martin, who was with them, “and that, so far as C is concerned, Jonah may be misguided but well-meaning.”

“I doubt whether Barry would support that view,” said Hamish. “The unfortunate old thing will be thirsting for Jonah’s blood over that long-jump accident to Colin. He’ll be very, very angry indeed when he comes back from leave and finds that the lad has been laid out with a couple of broken shins.”

“He knows about it already. Henry has written to him. Lesley isn’t feeling very sweetly disposed towards Jonah, cither,” said Jerry, “although, personally, I think she overplayed her hand when she went with a mouthful of curses to plague the Old Man about that idiotic girl of hers. After all, to do blighted Jonah justice, he swears he hadn’t asked the wretched kid to rake the pit, and if Lesley had taught her how to use her muscles correctly, she wouldn’t have dislocated a chunk of her silly little spine, would she?”

“Well, one might perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt there,” admitted Martin, “but he’s a menace and a misfit, all the same, and, whether he’s Gassie’s relative by marriage or not, I think he ought to be driven out into the wilderness to fend for himself and not live here in the lap of luxury. Why, his quarters are as good as those of Gassie himself, and what does he do to deserve them? He’s supposed to be in charge of the men’s gym, but how much time does he ever spend there? Instead of getting on with his own job, he’s making a thorough pest of himself, one way or another, on the field and the track, or else he’s propping up the bar in the Bricklayers’ Arms. It isn’t good enough, especially in a place like this.”

The opinion expressed by Martin had been endorsed by Henry, and on more than one occasion. Hamish often thought that Henry was like a small, alert sheepdog, chivvying, but never biting, the lost lambs who formed the bulk of Gascoigne Medlar’s flock. Henry brought to his work a monkish singleness of purpose which was remarkable even among his gifted and dedicated companions. These employed their various talents honestly, cheerfully and without stint. They could not be said to love their charges, but they did well by them. Henry was unique at Joynings in that, with him, it was possible not only to hate the sin but to love the sinner. Except for Gascoigne himself, he was the only member of staff ever to have been married. He had lost his wife under tragic circumstances and had found at Joynings a kind of anodyne. Under him, the College had been transformed from a private, although luxurious, prison into a sought-after and surprisingly successful reformatory.

Some credit for this success was also due to the Warden and some to the students themselves. The majority of them— the men in particular—had been worsted in their fight against authority when they were—so to speak—in the outside world, and were relieved, if not openly thankful, to be put out to grass for a bit in the easy-going, safe (although fenced-in) pastures of Joynings. They were lost lambs, not black sheep; weak, rather than wicked; ridiculous and sometimes vicious children, but not unprincipled, criminally-minded adults. For one thing, they had been carefully selected and vetted and were not a representative cross-section of the misguided, delinquent young, and the fact that they were athletes and swimmers meant that they were misfits who had a saving grace.

As for Gascoigne, there was no doubt that he was a businessman first and a philanthropist second, but he had spent on the College a great deal of the money he had inherited from his wife and had added one amenity after another until it was doubtful whether the students could have enjoyed better living-conditions anywhere else. Jones, his wife’s brother, had been left nothing under her will, but by giving him a place on the staff of the College and by turning a deaf ear to all the complaints against him, Gascoigne argued that he had done what he could.

What Gascoigne really thought of his brother-in-law not even Henry could say. The accident to Colin was never publicly referred to by the Warden. Jones’s first appearance at the high table after the accident was hissed by the long-jump squad, but there was no concerted demonstration against him. However, he soon brought himself again into prominence over another and a different matter.

The first indication of the trouble which was to ensue came in the form of a red-faced, thick-set man in a pin-striped suit and a bowler hat—clearly his Sunday rig-out—who approached Jerry on the running-track one afternoon and asked where he could find Jones.

“You can’t,” Jerry replied. “All visitors have to see the Warden.”

“I want Jones.”

“Well, you’ll have to see the Warden first. What do you want with Jones, anyway? You’re not a parent, are you?”

“None of your business, mister. Which way do I go?”

“I should try the front door.”

The man strode off. Jerry turned back to his squad of runners and thought no more about him until he saw the man returning an hour later. He was carrying a cheap suitcase and was accompanied by a girl whom Jerry recognized as one of the maids who waited at the high table.

“Good-bye, sir,” she said, as she passed him.

“Not leaving us, Bertha?” he asked. She gave something between a sniff and a sob and did not answer. The man tugged her sleeve with his free hand.

“Come on, come on,” he said. “The sooner you’re out of this hell’s kitchen the better, my gal.”

Exactly what had brought about Bertha’s abrupt departure from Joynings was revealed a little later. The story came from Miss Yale, who confided it to Henry, Hamish and Lesley when they were taking tea with her in her quarters a fortnight after Barry had gone on leave.

“Well, Jonah has done it this time,” she said. “I’ve talked turkey to Gassie about it and I’ve given it to him straight. If Bertha is pregnant, Jonah will have to go. We can’t afford that sort of thing here.”

“Her father came up,” said Henry. “Gassie told me about it. Gassie is in no end of a taking. He’s made up his mind to speak to Jones, so I think, Miss Yale, your words got home to him. The father threatened to make enough stink to get the College closed. He couldn’t do that, of course, but he could make things very awkward. He says he’s going to write to the local paper and blacken us with all sorts of accusations. It seems that Bertha has made up wild tales about goings-on between the men and the women students, and her father has swallowed them. Useless to point out to a man of that type that he could lay himself open to prosecution. Even if he were convicted, the damage would have been done.”

“Yes, everybody would be saying there’s no smoke without fire,” said Lesley. “Well, nobody would be more thankful than I if Jones were kicked out, but do you think Gassie would do it? He seems strangely attached to that gosh-awful misfit.”

“I think he feels he owes him something,” said Henry. “He’s his brother-in-law and, apart from his salary, Jonah is absolutely penniless.”

“That’s all the more reason why Jonah should behave himself,” said Miss Yale.

The story had an embarrassing aftermath for Hamish. Taken, at an early stage in his sojourn at Joynings, to see the Warden’s collection of trophies, he had shown so much interest in the various items that Gascoigne had asked him whether, during his leisure time (of which he had plenty, for his duties were not onerous), he would be willing to re-arrange and re-catalogue the treasures.

They were kept in an ante-room which opened out of the Warden’s study, and Hamish had been given a key to the locked chamber. He always tried to arrange matters so that he could go in when he knew that Gascoigne was elsewhere engaged. One morning, therefore, having no lectures and no other commitments, he let himself into the ante-room, leaving the door ajar, and soon was so much absorbed in a task which interested him and satisfied his curiosity, that it was some time before he realized that a conversation was going on between Gascoigne and Jones, and that the subject of it was Bertha, the servant whom Jones had seduced.

When this dawned upon Hamish he found himself in the unenviable position occupied by most involuntary eavesdroppers. He could emerge from his lair and excuse himself by reminding Gascoigne of his commission to review the trophies, thus risking embarrassment to all concerned, himself included, or he could remain where he was (and this, under the circumstances, seemed the tactful course) and expunge from his mind everything which he could not help overhearing. At the point when Hamish first realized what the conversation was about, it was running thus:

“And I can’t put up with it,” Gascoigne was saying. “The girl’s father has been here, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I prevented a confrontation between him and yourself, Davy. He was in a mood which I can only describe as dangerous. If what this man has told me turns out to be true, I shall have no option but to ask you to leave. I don’t
want
to demand your resignation…”

“You would never be willing to part with your dead wife’s brother, dear boy! Surely you could not bring yourself to do anything so unkind?” said Jones, in a most unpleasant tone.

“I should have no option, Davy, and so I warn you.”

“Hardly for
you
to warn
me
, is it?”

“There is a limit, you know, and if this wretched girl has a child…”

“My
dear
chap!”

“Well, her father seemed to think…”

“What a suspicious mind he must have! My dear Gassie, I assure you that there is no possibility…”

“I must hope that you are right. But you know what these girls are. If she has a child, whether it is yours or not, you will have laid yourself open to the most unpleasant consequences.”

“And you will have laid yourself open to paying compensation, of course, as you are my banker, dear boy; so, if the girl and her father attempt to put the screw on—well, you’ll know what to do about it, won’t you? You owe me already more than you’ll ever be able to pay.”

“Now, look here, Davy—.”

“Oh, be your age, my dear chap! Forget it! You can always square those sort of people, and you have plenty of my sister’s money for a hand-out.”

There was an angry exclamation from Gascoigne and then Hamish heard a door slam. He peered out through the crack of his own inner door. Jones had gone. Gascoigne Medlar sat down at his desk, pulled some papers towards him, fidgeted with them for a minute or two and then thrust them into a drawer and followed his brother-in-law out of the room. Hamish made his own escape and went in search of Martin, wishing that he could confide in him, for the conversation he had overheard hinted unpleasantly of blackmail. “There’s a film-show this afternoon instead of field and track practices,” said Martin. “Jerry will come for a run if you’ll join us. Henry doesn’t need any help in the hall.”

“Oh, good. What’s the idea, though?”

“Jerry wants to get into training for his club’s first crosscountry run, and Henry thinks a change will do the students good, I suppose. Can you be ready by two? That will give us a nice couple of hours and time for a bath and a change before tea. I’ve laid in some bangers. We can fry them over the gas-ring in my room. It will be like being back at school again.”

“Yes. Good! Fine! What about Barry, though? Wouldn’t he like to join us now he’s back from furlough?”

“No. He’s going to visit his wounded warrior in hospital and look in on Lesley’s damaged gymnasts.”

“What is Lesley doing, then?”

“Putting her Chronos Vase squad through it. Miss Yale and Celia are watching the film and the Warden says he’ll look in at it if he can. I say, did I ever tell you about my interview when he collected me on to the strength here?”

Hamish had heard the story before, but he was fond of his ingenuous friend and invited him to go ahead. He knew that Martin’s interview had not been so very different from his own, except for one pardonable mistake which Martin had made, a pitfall which Hamish had avoided.

“Well,” said Martin, “I only came down with a rather fluky third, you know, and I was applying for every scholastic job within reach, so I applied for this one. I hadn’t a hope, really, but it soon dawned on me that the last things the Warden cared about were academic qualifications. What he was after were good-tempered hearties, so the thing went somewhat as follows: (You have to imagine me with all my ganglions quivering, and being prepared to embrace the boss’s knees at the drop of a hat in order to get a job.)