R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (16 page)

Armed with his figures he asked Herries to call a special meeting of the subcommittee and made his circular public, but Carter, forewarned, produced an ace from his sleeve in the person of Blunt himself, a florid, ponderous man, who struck David as a truculent peasant using his unexpected wealth to whip the shoulders of all the locals who remembered his hand-to-mouth days. Faced with the result of the postal poll Blunt said, without preamble, that when he proposed a memorial he meant a memorial, not an addition to the school that would lose its identity as soon as it was built or installed. There was nothing David could do but back down and if Carter had left it there the whole thing would have been forgotten by the time the cross was unveiled at the dedication service Herries had planned.

That was not Carter's way, however. Determined to savour his triumph he buttonholed David in the quad on the first day of the summer term, and said, with counterfeit affability, 'Word in your ear, Powlett-Jones, and I hope you'll take it the way it's meant. You're comparatively new here, so you can't be expected to know how to handle the locals like Blunt. It so happens I do, not because I've spent ten years of my life here – aside from that spell in the army, of course – but because I'm West Country born. I know these chaps, believe me. Played the right way they can be damned useful to us. Blunt is rolling in money, and he loves kudos like a cat loves cream. Fine, let's humour him. Let's get all we can out of him. He'll end by endowing us handsomely if he's left to me.'

'You want his kind of money that much?'

'Why the devil not? It's as good as anyone else's money, isn't it?'

'No, it isn't,' David growled, 'it's come from soaking the Government when they had no alternative but to pay anything men like Blunt had the nerve to demand. I hate the bastards who sat tight and made fortunes in the war. I've got a hell of a sight more time for the conscientious objectors.'

Carter blinked at him. His eyes, David noticed for the first time, were angry,
ferrety eyes, red-rimmed, as though to match his rust-coloured hair. Suddenly, inexplicably if he had been able to contemplate it in a rational mood, David discovered that he hated him.

'That's a high moral tone to take at your age,' Carter said, in the voice he used to subdue mutinous spirits of the Fifth. 'Why not go down to Blunt's bank and ask the manager if you can sniff his pennies one by one? Just in order to satisfy yourself none of them are tainted?'

'I don't have to, I know they are. I slept in barrack huts men like Blunt provided. They were built of unseasoned timber that worked out at about five bob a foot. The men who inhabited those rabbit-hutches – when they were lucky, that is – were getting a shilling a day, for keeping Blunt and his like from being walked over by Prussian jackboots. To hell with Blunt and everybody like Blunt! I feel like spitting every time I pass his bloody memorial, and you can tell him so if you care to!'

'But I don't, old man,' Carter said, easily, 'I've better manners,' and drifted off, clearly quite unruffled.

It soon got around, as everything of that kind always did in a place like Bamfylde. A garbled version too, as David realised when Howarth drawled, 'Hear you're likely to be running short on saliva as soon as that shroud comes off the war memorial, Powlett-Jones. Not wise, I think, to empty your chamber at a tyke like Carter. Better to leave a shot or two in reserve. You'll have more trouble with him, so take a tip from a veteran common room skirmisher like myself.'

'How the hell
is
one to handle a man like Carter?' asked David, thoroughly exasperated. 'He knows it all, doesn't he?'

'He doesn't know me,' Howarth said, 'and that's encouraged him to keep out of my way for years. In a place like this you don't fight with drawn swords, my boy. You find a nice little spot behind a chimney pot and snipe. Imagine me telling you about sniping! However, you're not a fool and you'll learn. Providing you stay long enough, that is.'

It was odd how persistently his defeat at the hands of Carter nagged at him, and it wasn't long before Beth dragged it out in the open, demanding to hear the full story. She said, when he declared that he intended looking for a new situation the moment he had taken his degree, 'That's silly, Davy, and if you think about it you'll see it is. There'll be a Carter in every school, and if you mean to stay in the profession you'd better face the fact. Howarth's right. It's your tactics that are amateur. You never want to give the Carters of this world
an opening. I wish you'd told me about this before.'

'Do you think I wanted to worry you at a time like this?'

'Pooh,' she said, 'a time like what? Life has to go on, doesn't it? But, in any case, I've news that should take your mind off Carter and Mr Blunt for a spell. Doc Willoughby was here this afternoon and brought a friend of his. A gynaecologist from Bristol.'

His jaw dropped and he looked so dismayed that she yelped with laughter. 'Oh, David, don't keel over! It's not that bad; at least,
I
don't think it is. Tell me, are there any twins in your family?'

'
Twins!
Good God… are you sure? …Is Willoughby and that Bristol chap?'

'More or less, I think, but doing well so they tell me. No wonder I was such a size. I was beginning to think of discarding the name “David” for “Goliath". Now it'll have to be David and Jonathan.'

He said, wonderingly. 'You… you don't
mind?
You're not scared?' 'Not in the least. No, honestly I'm not, I'm… well… rather excited if anything. But Willoughby says I can't have the baby – babies – here, as planned, with Nurse Arscott standing by. I'll have to go into a Challacombe nursing home a few days in advance. Can we afford it? It'll cost about eight guineas a week, they say.'

'Good Lord, of course we can afford it if it's necessary. But are you sure it doesn't entail complications? I mean, why did he bring that chap here in the first place?'

'Just to make sure,' Beth said, but nothing would do but that he should go hurrying over to the village the minute prep was over, to pursue his own line of enquiry. Willoughby satisfied him, or at least moderated his anxiety, assuring him that Beth was a good, healthy girl and unlikely to run into trouble. 'At the least hint of it I'd plump for a Caesarian,' he said, 'but I don't advise it. Go on home, and let her calm you down, old man.'

And David went, walking ruefully across the little strip of moor that gave access to the junior pitches and then, through a gap in the hedge, down the road to the cottage. As he passed the angle of the buildings housing the prefects' studies, however, his ear caught the lilting whine of Carrington's portable gramophone, playing one of his favourite jazz numbers. Part of the refrain, sung in a high nasal tone, came to him in the fading light,

Yes, I'm goin',
Yes, I'm goin',
And soon I'll be hallo-ing
To that coal-black Mammy o' mine…

It soothed his nerves somehow, so that he grinned, remembering that Carrington was jazz mad, and played the saxophone at school dances, familiarising everybody with the latest wave of song-hits from the U.S.A. He thought, 'Two of them, eh? Well, if they're boys, and she swears they are, I'll have two Carringtons here about seventeen years from now. I wonder what they'll be playing then?'

He looked back over his shoulder as he vaulted the lane gate at the corner of the cricket field, seeing a violet glow moving like a slowly drawn curtain across the last rays of the sun. In the uncertain light the huddle of buildings no longer seemed incongruous up there on the lower edge of the plateau and he thought, glancing back at them, 'Well, that's home, all right, and I'm damned if I let a twirp like Carter turn me out of it,' and he went down the incline to Stonecross thinking of Blunt and his war memorial as very small beer indeed.

1

H
E WAS DOWN AT THE LONG-JUMP PIT WHEN LITTLE Stratton-Forbes brought him the news. Stratton-Forbes of all people. The smallest boy in the school, with round, cherubic face and snub nose supporting professorial, steel-framed spectacles, for Stratton-Forbes had a squint they were trying to correct – 'Before it grows on me,' as he had remarked, quite innocently, to would-be-tormentors, completely disarming them.

Sports Day was upon them again by then and some of the junior events were scheduled to be run off in advance. Irvine, who had appropriated to himself the role of sports master, asked David's help in measuring the cinder track leading to the pit, but Irvine was not the only one at work on the jump. Carrington, the Sixth Form jazz enthusiast was there, and with him two or three other seniors engaged in spreading the cinders, when a breathless Stratton-Forbes appeared and shrieked, at the top of his voice, 'Please-sir-message-from-the-Head-sir! Head-said-to-say-two-girls-sir-both-doing-well-sir!'

The entire group, David excepted, exploded with laughter and Stratton-Forbes blinked, wondering what was so funny, so that the incident passed straightaway into Bamfylde legend and Barnaby, that master-coiner of nicknames, bestowed upon Stratton-Forbes the title of 'Annunciator', soon shortened to 'Nun'. Years were to pass before Stratton-Forbes, a very serious-minded boy, fully understood how he came by his soubriquet.

But David did not hear about this until much later. The annunciation projected him through the beech hedge behind the jump-pit, up the east drive and across the threshold of the head's house in twelve seconds flat. Carrington, seeing him go, afterwards declared that Pow-Wow had beaten the world's sprint record, without even trying.

Algy Herries was standing beside the telephone in the hall, the receiver in his hand, a beaming smile on his face, so that David had no need to seek corroboration before grabbing the phone and bellowing, 'Powlett-Jones here! That you, Doc? Is she all right?' and Willoughby assured him that she was as right as rain, except that the lady seemed a little put out they were girls, but had come to terms with her poor showing as a sex-determinator as soon as she was shown the twins. 'She's tired, naturally,' he went on, 'but who wouldn't be? The first little monster turns the scale to six-three, her sister at just under the six mark. Faultless performance. Congratulations, old man. Will you put me back to the head?'

'Hold on a minute… when can I see her… them…? Some time tomorrow, first thing? I can get Irvine to cover my periods. To hell with his hurdle course!' and at that both Herries and Willoughby laughed, and the doctor said, 'Why not this evening? Say around seven. She's asleep now but they'll wake her for supper,' and David turned to Herries, who nodded, and said, thankfully, 'Seven sharp then. Thanks, Doc. I'll get there somehow.'

'All in a day's drudgery,' Willoughby said and had his word with the head, leaving David standing to one side and feeling extraordinarily foolish. He said, when Herries hooked up the phone, 'Er… thank you for sending Stratton-Forbes, sir…'

'He got it right, then?'

'Word perfect. A little too perfect. He blurted it out in front of everyone. Shall we go in and tell Mrs Herries?'

But there was no need. Ellie, concealed in the archway at the entrance to the study passage, had been present all the time and now came forward.

'Congratulations, dear boy. It's splendid, isn't it, Algy? The first Bamfylde twins I can remember.'

'The first ever,' Herries said, 'but it would have been better if Powlett-Jones had had a house, and the brats had been born on the premises. Wonderful headline there. “Girl twins born in boys' school",' and he chuckled, as he usually did at his own jokes.

'Don't tease the poor boy,' Ellie said, 'try and be serious for a moment, do! What will you christen them? Was it fixed in advance?'

'No, it wasn't Mrs Herries, for Beth would have it they were boys. They were going to be David and Jonathan, but now… well… have you any ideas?'

'
I
have,' Herries said, unexpectedly. 'Have you seen yesterday's papers? They're canonising Joan of Arc today. There was a lot about it in yesterday's
Times
. Your subject's history. Won't Joan do for one of them? I've always liked the name myself.'

'I'll certainly put it up to Beth. Joan. Yes, I rather like “Joan” myself.'

'And how about the other?' asked Ellie. 'Joan of Arc was unique, wasn't she? You could choose another saint of course… Ursula, Veronica, Mary… they're all nice names,' but Herries cut in, impatiently, saying, 'Pish, my dear! You're missing the point. People will never see Joan of Arc as a saint, no matter how much Rome puts out about the poor girl. She'll always be associated with simple heroics. What we need now is another heroine. An English one, for preference. Any ideas, P.J.?'

It seemed absurd to be standing here in the tiled hall, discussing his children's given names with Herries and his wife. Absurd but very cosy and reassuring, almost as if the rubicund, white-maned old chap had really assumed the personality of that earnest bowlegged miner, who had gone into the lower workings of the Pontnewydd pit one summer morning and never been seen again. And thinking this David felt an impulse to humour Herries at all costs and said, 'How about “Grace"? Grace Darling, of course! Or “Emily", after the suffragette, Emily Davison, who comes from the same part of the world?'

'I'll plump for Grace, if you don't mind,' Herries said, 'We've had about all we can stand from the suffragettes.'

' “Grace” will do very nicely,' said Ellie, 'but for heaven's sake don't let him bully you into using those names if your wife doesn't care for them. He's always been very silly about names, and that's nonsense, of course. He's never liked my sister Maud, simply because he had a nagging aunt of the same name. But here, what am I thinking of? We should be drinking your health, shouldn't we? Wetting the baby's head, isn't that what it's called?' and she led them into the drawing-room where Algy unearthed a fine pale sherry that he kept for himself and a few chosen friends. 'I never waste this on parents,' he said. 'Sweet does for them. For the Governors, too, except one or two Old Boys, sharp enough to hang about until the others have gone.'

They drank to him and then to Beth and the twins, and by four o'clock that afternoon, having skipped his last period, he was halfway to Challacombe by the lower road, the longer but faster route on account of its surface and gradients.