A Javelin for Jonah (5 page)

Me
. Good morning, sir. It is very good of you to see me.

Him
. Good morning, my dear fellow. Sit down, sit down, won’t you? Now, let me see. What did we apply for?

Me
. Assistant lecturer in applied maths, sir.

Him
. Ah, yes, to be sure. Of course. I remember now. Well, my dear fellow—by the way, we are all on Christian name terms here, so I shall address you hereafter as—let me see now—your application form? Here we are! Yes, of course! I shall address you in future as Martin. Well, now, Martin! Applied mathematics, as it is understood at Joynings, is a severely practical subject. There will be a certain amount of lecture-room work, of course, but nothing which need worry you. Henry will know. Perhaps you would go out on to the field and find him. Look for a small, spare man wearing a regrettable tweed cap with his blazer. He will tell you what he wants you to do. Coaching of field athletics, I believe it is. You won an inter-college event, I understand, in some form of throwing competition when you were up.

Me
. Yes, sir, I—that is, well, the shot. It’s not really a throw, it’s a putt. As a matter of fact, sir…

Him
. Gassie, my dear Martin, Gassie.

Me
. I didn’t mean to be loquacious, sir. I’m very sorry. I only meant to tell you…

Him
. Loquacious?

Me
. Gassy, sir.”

Hamish laughed. “You
are
an ass!” he said.

“I could see a new thought had come to him,” went on Martin, “but you know, Jimmy, I can no more envisage myself addressing the Warden as Gassie than taking a trip in a space thingummy to the moon. However—I don’t believe I’ve told anybody this bit—I went on to tell him that, when he put me right, I was only going to say that I was really a javelin man. We were short on the shot that year, so I agreed to take it on, but it wasn’t my best event. All he said was, ‘Splendid, my dear Martin. Henry is the small, alert man in the loud tweed cap which he insists upon wearing with his blazer.’ ”

“His method of terminating all interviews, I think,” said Hamish, reserving to himself the fact that Gascoigne’s last interview had not been concluded in quite that way. “What about this run?”

“The run? Oh, I’m leaving that to Jerry. He’ll know a route. About seven miles is my idea, but he may want to stretch it to twelve.”

“If he does,” said Hamish, “I think you and I will take a short cut home and fry the bangers.”

Jerry, however, was willing to allow that six or seven miles at that time of year would be sufficient.

“It’s damned hot today,” he said. “Heard the latest about Jonesy?”

“If you mean in connection with Bertha’s father,” began Martin, “the answer is yes.”

“Oh, no. Since then. It seems Jonah has been to old Gassie and offered his resignation. One of my sprint relay lot told me.”

“
No
!” exclaimed Martin and Hamish in chorus.

“Fact. Had it from Jonah himself, so the lad said.”

“When?” asked Hamish, the conversation he had overheard being fresh in his mind. “When did you hear this?”

“Just a few minutes ago. Jonah told this chap that the Bertha story—which is all round College, by the way—was all my eye, but that it had hurt him to think Gassie believed it, so, in order to resolve the situation (the kid’s words, not mine) Jonah had decided to leave.”

“Does anybody else know?” asked Martin.

“Soon will, anyhow. Well, now, do you chaps think we’d better just look in on Henry and Ma Yale to make sure everything is still all right in the dining-hall before we go off?”

The idea that this was at all necessary tickled Hamish, since Henry possessed apparently hypnotic or occult powers where the management and control of the students was concerned, and Miss Yale was the last person on earth to need assistance with College discipline.

“Oh, I shouldn’t think he’d thank us,” he said. “Bit of an interruption, if he’s already got the film started, wouldn’t you think?”

“I don’t know. There’s a funny feeling abroad,” said Martin,“ and there’ll be whoopee, anyway, once the students know Jonah is going to leave us.”

“If he really
is
going to leave us,” said Hamish, again remembering the last words he had heard Jones address to the Warden, and the arrogant sound of a loudly-slammed door.

The cross-country run was enjoyable and was completely without incident. When it was over, the three runners, bathed and changed, assembled in Martin’s room to fry the sausages and settle down to consume these and the rest of the feast which he had provided, and the College, intent upon its own tea, appeared to be at peace. The two young women lecturers, with Henry and Barry (who had returned from the hospital), were entertained to buttered scones and cake by Miss Yale and Gascoigne, it was assumed, was taking tea in his own quarters, so that the only person who appeared to be unaccounted for was Jones, although nobody was particularly concerned about this, as he often took tea with Gascoigne before spending the evening at the Bricklayers’ Arms. His name, however, came up as usual.

“I can’t understand Gassie over this Bertha business,” said Lesley. “Hang it all, here he had the chance to get rid of Jonah once and for all, and without a decent testimonial, at that. Instead of kicking him out, he just lets him resign as though he was a decent type like any other of us.”

“So long as he goes, I don’t care how it comes about,” said Celia. “I never got around to telling you what he did to one of my divers. It was the week before Jimmy joined the strength, and I honestly believe that if Jimmy had been with us at the time he would have treated Jonah as one of my girls told me he treated that little swine Kirk at his first French lecture. If Jones—”

“I wish to heaven we could keep Jones out of the conversation,” said Barry. “The very sound of his name makes me feel murderous.”

“Me, too,” said Lesley. “How did you find my two girls? You went to see them, didn’t you?”

“More cheerful than my poor Colin, although how the young idiot could have been such a fool as to let Jones con him into attempting a stupid trick like that, I shall never know.” Barry, to everyone’s embarrassment, blinked back tears.

“I think your two hussies were at fault, too,” said Miss Yale to Lesley. “A trained gymnast should never allow her concentration to be upset when she’s practising.”

“Thank you, I’m sure,” said Lesley angrily. “And I suppose my other hussy should have refused point-blank when she was asked to rake that pit?”

“Now, now,” said Henry. “We’ve no evidence that Jones intended to attract the girl’s attention in the gym, and none that he asked the other girl to do the raking. I know the fellow is a complete liability, but fair’s fair, after all.”

“There was nothing fair about the way he treated Colin,” said Barry, now scowling down at the cream-cake on his plate. “I’ve had it out with him, though. I don’t think he’ll pull any more of his tricks on my squad.”

“Talking of that,” said Celia, “well, I speak as an outside observer, in a way, I suppose, being only on part-time here, but don’t you think perhaps there’s a bit too much of this ‘my squad’ business? I mean,” she went on, for she was a courageous but obtuse young woman, “I think Lesley is far more concerned about those two girls than about Colin, and Barry feels vice versa. Oughtn’t we to think about the College as a whole, so to speak?—if you see what I mean.”

“The difficulty about that,” said Henry, “is that what
everybody
thinks about,
nobody
thinks about particularly. Even you, Celia, couldn’t get your diving belles up to the excellent pitch you do, unless you were single-minded about your divers and didn’t give a hoot for Jimmy’s swimmers, for example.”

“Even
I
give all my attention to the girls,” said Miss Yale, “and don’t give a damn for the men, so I think perhaps Celia has got on to something, in a way. Trouble is, as Henry points out, our standards would soon go down if everybody mucked in at everything. You’ve simply got to specialize, and that involves bias.”

“It’s by playing off squad against squad that we get our results, I suppose,” agreed Lesley. “Our various gangs are much keener on outdoing one another in collecting pots and medals, than they are keen on the College as a whole. Personally, with the types we have to deal with, I’m all for the competitive spirit, although I really am terribly sorry about Colin, Barry, really I am.”

Barry crumpled up the paper serviette which Miss Yale had supplied, thanked her abruptly for the tea and stalked out.

“Somebody has started this rumour that Jones will be leaving us,” said Miss Yale, “but is there really anything in it, do you think?”

“Nothing at all,” said Henry. “I heard it, too, and went straight to Gassie. First
he’d
heard of it, he said. He was sure it is nothing but a canard. I hope the students aren’t up to some mischief, that’s all.”

After tea the students always employed themselves in any legitimate way which suggested itself to them. There were various clubs and societies; there was a drama group, a choral union, an orchestra, and a chess club. There were facilities for make-and-mend; the workshops were open; coaching still went on for those who were particularly ambitious and energetic; there were tennis courts, a clock-golf course, the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, provision for squash and badminton. There was also a first-class library and an art room.

The evening meal was at eight and it was the custom for the whole staff to attend it. They sat at the high table in an orthodox setting and the high table at night always took on a festive appearance, with the men in dinner-jackets and the women in semi-formal attire. The glass and silver on the long tables all down the hall sparkled and shone, and the wine (strictly rationed but invariably provided) was poured by servants as impeccable and silent-footed as those in any nineteenth-century ducal mansion. Although the students were as talkative and noisy as those in any other college dining-hall, decorum reigned and the general atmosphere was happy and relaxed, as it was almost bound to be in the presence of such good food and palatable (although limited) wine.

The staff table had one vacant seat. As it was the custom for the whole faculty to be present at the evening meal unless anybody happened to be on leave, Gascoigne, at a pause in the conversation, remarked upon Jones’s absence from the board.

“I have no idea where he can be,” said Henry, who was seated, as usual, upon the Warden’s left. (Miss Yale invariably sat at his right hand, as the senior woman present). “I don’t remember seeing him since just after lunch.”

“I really wish he wouldn’t go into the village so often,” said Gascoigne. “It doesn’t do our image any good to have him always hanging round that public-house.”

“I’ll mention it to him, if you like.”

“Oh, no, don’t do that. He must please himself, of course. I keep no tabs on the staff so long as they carry out their duties.”

“But he doesn’t carry out his duties,” said Miss Yale. “When is he ever in the gym? He prefers messing about on the field and causing injuries to the students and annoying and embarrassing my girls.”

“I shall speak to him about that. I have already dealt with him over the recent incident involving Bertha.”

“I shall do more than speak to him. I’ll drop the shot on his head if he doesn’t leave the girl students alone, and so I’ve told him.” And Miss Yale took wine in a determined manner.

Gascoigne turned the conversation on to other matters. The meal ended at nine, and the staff and students trooped out. At ten the Warden left the senior common room to which, as usual, he had been invited for coffee, and at eleven Henry did visiting rounds and locked up the mansion to keep out any prospective Romeos who might fancy a visit to the women students’ rooms and to keep indoors any of Miss Yale’s charges who had an urge to invade the halls of residence. He then took the keys to the Warden and they talked about College affairs and had a night-cap together as usual. Before returning to his quarters on this particular occasion, however, Henry had something unusual to report.

“Jones isn’t back,” he said, “but I thought I’d better lock up as usual, so I did. All right?”

“Jones? Davy? Dear me! I suppose he went to the village. He very often does. I was surprised, all the same, not to see him at dinner. Perhaps his car has broken down.”

“The Bricklayers’ Arms closes at half-past ten, and he knows plenty of people there,” said Henry. “It’s a quarter to twelve. He’d have got a lift back by now.”

“Oh, well, he’ll have to knock somebody up when he does come in, but it’s very unsatisfactory of him, I must say. I hate the servants to be disturbed at night.”

“I shan’t be going to bed yet. I’ll wait up for him, if you like.”

But midnight came, and twelve-thirty. At a quarter to one Henry decided that Jones had found somewhere in the village to sleep. He might be too drunk to drive, or, if his car had broken down, he might have begged a bed at the Bricklayers’ Arms and would hope to cadge a lift back to College in the morning.

There was no sign of Jones at breakfast, but nobody on the staff felt any concern until lunchtime came and there was still no word of him.

“I can’t understand it,” said Henry. The Warden looked gloomy and wagged his head, but offered no words.

S
urely he can’t have slung his hook without a word to anybody,” added Henry to Hamish, as they left the building, following their after-lunch coffee, Henry bound for the field and Hamish to meet his men’s and women’s relay squad for a coaching-session in the covered pool. Ordinarily he preferred the outdoor fifty-metre swimming bath, but the drill on this particular afternoon was to be the practice of starts, take-overs and turns, and for such the indoor pool was more satisfactory than the other.

He was able to make use of it because there was no diving practice that day, Celia being on duty at the municipal baths in the town. She had first claim on the indoor pool when she was at the College, for its boards were of standard height and there were no swimmers to get in the way of her divers. These also preferred a covered bath because there was no wind to upset their balance and concentration. The upland pastures which surrounded Joynings were always breezy, they complained.

Neither Hamish nor Henry had hurried over coffee, for the students took no part in sports or swimming for at least an hour after lunch, but by the time Hamish entered the covered bath-house his squad were changed and ready for him. It was while they were resting after the first work-out that he received what he interpreted as a hint. It seemed that the whereabouts of the missing Jones was known to some members of the College, if not, in fact, to all. It began when the end door opened and an attendant, bearing clean towels, entered. He deposited these and went out again, whereupon one of the girls exclaimed, “Goodness! I thought it must be Jonah sneaking in! The divers say he often creeps in here to study form!” She ended with a giggle.

One of the boys said, “Jonah would have a job to sneak in here today. And you keep your little trap shut, darling.”

“Oh! Oh, yes.” She giggled again. “I forgot the whale’s belly.”

“Less of it.” The boy jerked his head towards Hamish. “It’s not only walls that have ears.”

Hamish affected to take no notice. He felt that he had picked up a clue, but also that it would be of no use to probe too deeply into the girl’s disclosure, although she had made it clear that his students knew where Jones was, and probably had put him there.

“Well, come on,” said Hamish crisply. “Two lengths each, medley teams, remembering what I’ve told you about the turns and the take-over. Get in, back-strokes. Bunch up more, Phyllis. You want to try for the devil of a shove-off at the start. Get into your stroke as your head is coming up. That right arm should be out of the water as you surface, ready to pull. And you, Ken,
throw
yourself back when you start. Think of a dolphin and emulate its tactics.”

“Sure you don’t mean a whale, Jimmy?” said the boy, grinning. So, wherever Jones was, it seemed unlikely that the students intended his incarceration to be anything but a rag, deduced Hamish.

“On your marks,” he said. The medley relay teams consisted of four swimmers each. It was the custom, since, on the whole, the men were faster than the girls, for Hamish to mix the teams. The back-stroke swimmers had to be a man and a girl respectively, but a man took over from the girl on the butterfly leg, a girl from him on the breast-stroke, and a man completed the team by swimming the last two lengths on free-style. The other team followed the same plan, but in reverse.

Hamish was accustomed to pace the teams himself by swimming the eight lengths on free-style, and did so on this occasion. The exercise kept him in trim and spurred on the teams, who were determined some day to beat him.

When the training session was over, Hamish went straight to Henry, who was entertaining Rixie, Richard and a couple of girl discus-throwers to tea.

“Sit down, Jimmy, and have a cuppa. Plenty in the pot,” said Henry cordially.

“Oh, I didn’t come to gate-crash your tea-party,” said Hamish. “Just official business. It will keep.”

“Somebody been throwing out hints about Jonah?” asked Richard. “Is that the official business?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, in a vague sort of way.”

“There’s an arrangement for feeding rattlesnakes,” said Rixie. “I can tell you that much, if you want to know.”

“It was the mention of whales which intrigued me,” Hamish explained. “Is there any chance of history repeating itself? Is it arranged for Jonah to be spewed up before he perishes?”

The students remained silent.

“It isn’t their pigeon,” said Henry. “They have explained to me that they are not listed among the storm-tossed mariners who threw Jonah overboard, and therefore are loth to muscle in on somebody else’s casting of lots. Have another piece of cake, Dick, old son.”

“Thanks,” said Richard, cutting himself a generous slice. “Fact is, we can’t very well interfere, but we think the thing has gone far enough. The bloody so-and-so has been put away since early on Wednesday afternoon and now it’s Thursday tea-time.
We
think it’s time to call it off. Solitary confinement isn’t much fun, you know, is it?”

“He’s somewhere on the premises, then?”

“Can’t tell you any more. There’s a syndicate involved. We don’t want to be roughed up by a pack of rude boys. I don’t mind two or three, but I don’t care for the idea of four of them sitting on me while two more get to work on my features with a razor-blade,” said Richard.

“Same goes for me,” said Rixie, “so—enough said. It’s up to the beaks now. We’ve tipped Henry off. We can’t do more.”

“There appears to be a vestige of human feeling about you blokes, after all,” said Hamish. “Are our features likely to be similarly decorated if we turn the place upside-down to look for the egregious Mr. Jones?”

“Couldn’t say. Thanks for the tea, Harry boy. No leakage of how you came by your information, eh?” said Rixie.

“So far as I’m concerned, I have received no information. I shall announce at dinner tonight that there will be no gym for the men until Mr. Jones decides to return to his duties, then I shall lock the gym doors against unauthorized entry and suggest the gym blokes take to other activities, that’s all,” Henry promised him.

“Does ‘the whale’s belly’ give you any ideas?” asked Hamish, when the students had gone.

“Not a sausage. I fancy it was the girls who nagged those two huskies into saying as much as they did.”

“Yes, that might be so,” said Hamish, “although I wouldn’t have thought the girls had that much influence in what Damon Runyon would call this ‘man’s town’.”

“Scarcity value,” said Henry. “Eighteen of them as against eighty-two of the grosser sex, you know.”

“Granted. All the same, doesn’t it strike you that there are two rather rummy aspects to all this?”

“Students are bound to break out occasionally.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then how do you mean?”

“Oh, well, I told you, when first we met, that I had a suspicious mind, but look at what
you
told
me
.”

“Can’t remember. What was it?”

“You said that the students don’t gang up on us. Well, it seems to me that they’ve ganged up on Jones, you know, and they ganged up on my predecessor, didn’t they?”

“Only a few of them. Barry reports that he’s been discharged from hospital—Merve, you know. Gassie won’t have him back, though. He’s persuaded Merve’s uncle to give him a job in his steelworks. As for Jonah, well, he’s been asking for trouble for years.”

“Granted. But, having ganged up on him, why are some of the students so uneasy? I mean, you wouldn’t say that my swimmers have much in common with Richard, who is a muscle man and operates the shot and occasionally the hammer, and Rixie, who’s a discus man, would you?”

“I don’t quite get your point.”

“Look, it’s what Celia is always getting at. The various squads here are not only in competition with other colleges and the big clubs and so forth; they are very much in competition with one another. That’s why there’s no real cohesion in Joynings. The College doesn’t add up.”

“So?”

“Well, it makes for our convenience in a great many ways, but it means that, in this case, the probable parking of Jones in something they refer to as the whale’s belly has gone outside all their normal behaviour.”

“I’ve answered that one. What the virtuous, such as you and me, couldn’t have brought about—i.e., the complete fusion of all the warring sects in College—the egregious Jonah has accomplished simply by being just that shade above the odds which, even to our delinquent flock, makes all the difference.”

“Possibly. I grant you that, but I return to my first point: why, having decided to banish Jones in this way, are some of them so uneasy? Apart from Richard, who’s a sentimentalist, these kids are tough nuts. They must therefore have reason to be afraid of something. I really think we’d better find Jones, you know.”

There was a long pause. Hamish, who had learned from Dame Beatrice, his mother’s employer and his own best friend, the value of silence, waited while Henry thought over what had been said.

“How long did the prototype remain in the whale’s belly?” asked Henry suddenly.

“Three days and three nights, or so I seem to remember.”

“Oh, well, then, we need not worry unduly. Jonah won’t come to harm in that time if we don’t manage to find him before Saturday morning. I expect they will count Wednesday, so that leaves the rest of today and all of Friday. They say they’re feeding him, and that’s the main thing. I think, you know, we may assume that Jonah will be at breakfast on Saturday morning or even at dinner, if he’s lucky, tomorrow night.”

“But supposing they’ve shut him up in some place where the oxygen is liable to give out? They may not have thought of that. I wonder who started the rumour that he’d resigned? Of course, I know it’s a coverup by the students to account for his absence, but nobody has really swallowed it, so it didn’t get them far.”

“That’s true enough, but you know what cuckoos they are. Well, your panic-warning about lack of oxygen has impressed me more than a little, so I do think perhaps it behoves us to look for the wretched fellow.”

“When do we begin?”

“After lights-out. We’ll give the halls of residence a good hour and a half, I think, before we up with our electric torches and have a scout round. You realize when all this must have taken place, don’t you?”

“During the film, I suppose.”

“I’m afraid so. Attendance at the show was optional, in any case, but, apart from that, it would have been easy enough for two or three of the chaps to slip out. The hall was in darkness and, anyway, people do drift in and out during a longish film, if only to visit the loo.”

“Is it certain that Jones was in College during the film?”

“Well, he was present at lunch, if you remember, so I imagine he was on the premises later. At any rate, he helped me (to my great surprise, I must say) to supervise the clearing of the dining-hall and the setting-out of the chairs ready for the film-show, and that would have made it rather late for him to get to the pub. Besides, I think he had some plan to sit next to Lesley at the film, because I heard her telling him in no uncertain tone that she would be in the gym with her competition squad while the show was on, and wouldn’t be attending it.”

“Well, there’s no doubt some of the hearties know where he is and have pressurized the lesser brethren into keeping quiet. I’m not concerned about his diet, and if they’re keeping him fed, they must be letting in a little air, but I do hope the lunatics haven’t overdone the thing in other ways. He’s a powerful chap, although he’s gone to seed a bit, and I think they may have had to rough him up before they could get him put away,” said Hamish.

“More than likely,” Henry agreed. “Oh, well, I’ll meet you outside your room at half-past twelve.”

They separated. At half-past ten that night, Hamish, with two hours to get through before zero hour, composed a letter to his mother. In it he mentioned Jones’s disappearance, putting this down to a students’ rag, and added that he thought the College and its inhabitants would interest Dame Beatrice. Having addressed the letter and stamped it, he strolled downstairs to the College collecting-box which was just outside the front door, and put in his letter. Every member of staff possessed a front-door key, so, having closed the door behind him, he decided to go for a walk in the grounds, and began by taking a path towards the sports field.

He skirted the running-track and strolled towards the men’s changing-rooms. He had been wondering where the students could have hidden Jones if he were still somewhere on the premises and, although he thought the choice of the changing-rooms would have been an unlikely one, he decided to make a reconnaissance.

It was dark by this time, but the summer night was full of stars. As he walked across the turf—for the changing-rooms had been put up on the side of the grounds furthest from the house but nearest to the halls of residence—he thought about the Warden and wondered, not for the first time, what that enigmatical man was really like. From Gascoigne Medlar his thoughts turned again to Jones. Even allowing for all the claims which close relationship—and was a brother-in-law so close a relative, after all?—it seemed strange that such a single-minded egoist as he judged Medlar to be should tolerate, at close quarters and for so long a time, the only person on the College staff who seemed bent on sabotage. How many of Jones’s exploits could be put down to sheer but well-intentioned idiocy became more and more doubtful, but of his drinking-habits and the even more reprehensible actions to which his self-indulgence committed him, there seemed no reasonable doubt. Medlar’s continued toleration of him seemed remarkable enough to be mysterious unless (again it occurred to Hamish) Jones was in a position to blackmail the Warden.

The changing-rooms, brick-built and commodious, stood out against a background of glimmering sky and the pale wreaths of the stars. Hamish walked up to the window and called Jones by name. There was neither answer nor any sound of movement from within the building. He walked all the way round it, tapping on the walls and doors and continuing to call out, “Jones! I say! Are you there, Jones?” But, like the lonely traveller in the poem, he called out in vain. In the starlight the building stood silent and apparently deserted. The men-students had keys to the cupboards, but the only key to the outside doors must be with the head groundsman. Hamish trotted back to the main building to keep his appointment with Henry.