R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (28 page)

Boyer said, with difficulty, 'There was one other thing, sir. The perks wanted me to tell you how they felt about it. We all liked Mrs Powlett-Jones very much. She… well… fitted in so well, sir, right from the start. I know talking doesn't do a da – doesn't help much, sir. But they wanted you to know. I'll go now, sir,' and he crushed out his half-smoked cigarette and rose, abruptly.

David said, 'Stay till Silence bell. God knows, I need company,' and Boyer sat again, and when Ellie Herries came in with his coffee and pills, he fetched another cup and saucer from the kitchen and poured from the pot. He said, as soon as Ellie had gone, 'This is going to take some weathering, Chad. Between ourselves I can't see myself making it.'

'I'll bet you will, sir.'

'Would you mind telling me why? Without the usual flannel. The way you might discuss it with Dobson, or some other chum, and I don't ask out of curiosity. I need to know if I'm to stay on and that's doubtful, I can assure you.'

He was struck by the boy's crestfallen expression as he protested… 'But that… that's
daft,
sir! I mean, it's not
you
at all…!'

It occurred to him that one never ceased to be taken unawares by boys. He had always thought of Boyer as an original. A boy who conceived the idea of epileptic fits to beguile a classroom had to be, and, to add to that, he had always seen him as enterprising and possessing above-average intelligence. But he had never thought of him as vulnerable, or having much of what he had come to regard as a boy's poignancy, something nearly all of them had in one way or another. Boyer's distraught look brought to mind earlier encounters. His talk with Briarley, the day Briarley learned of his father's death on the Lys. Skidmore's stiffnecked refusal to bow to the Founder's statue. Blades's lost expression, soon after Julia Darbyshire had warned him off. And, more recently Winterbourne's look when told of the accident. He said, quietly, 'I'm not saying I shall end up cutting my throat. Just that I might feel the need to get away from here, where we spent six happy years. Start again, maybe…' but he couldn't go on.

'I think you're absolutely wrong about that, sir.'

'Why? Isn't it a natural impulse?'

'Maybe, but well… I don't know whether I've any right to stick my oar in.'

'I'm asking you to.'

'All right. You belong here. You have from the first day, sir and that isn't flannel. It isn't because the chaps like you either, although they all do. It's because… well, because you get
through
to them, in a way older masters don't and can't. Particularly in your subject. I never gave a damn about history before you taught it. I mean, it was no more than a string of dates, and dead mutton to me and to most of the other chaps. But you made it… well,
mean
something. You showed us how it fits in with today, if you see what I mean?'

It was a queer kind of compliment but it warmed him. He said, however, 'Couldn't I do that at any school?'

'No, sir. Or not so well.'

'Why?'

'Because… well, because you learned the trick of it here, sir. You're part of
the place now. The way you teach… well, it fits in with Alg… with the head's way, sir.'

'Are you saying you fellows really understand the head's theories on education?'

'I think some of us do. By the time we get to the Sixth, that is. Some of the chaps have been to other schools, although I never have. I came here as a nipper. They all say the same thing, that this place is different, not just because of the head but because of where it is, up here on its own and with its own way of life. And lately because of you, and the way you try and put the head's ideas into practice. Do you get the message, sir. Or am I talking a lot of coc – er… rubbish?'

'I get the message, Chad.'

'You'll think about it then?'

'I'll think about it.'

That was the first incident, but there was another a few hours later when, just before morning school, Graves-Jones poked his head round the corner of his sitting-room, holding a bunch of freesias, carnations and maidenhair fern.

Graves-Jones was not a boy one might expect to see presenting a bouquet. David remembered him vividly, from the first day they met in the garden of the cottage, when Beth gave her first new boys' tea-party, and how he clicked his heels, Prussian-fashion, when thanking his hostess. All the way up school – he was in the Sixth now – Graves-Jones had justified Beth's first impression of him, a suave, confident boy, with demonstrably good manners, a little at odds with his generation. He said, without a trace of embarrassment, 'I was just going into class, sir, and thought these should go into water. Will you be going to the hospital this afternoon, sir?'

'I'm not sure. I might. Why?'

'Well, if you do, sir, I wondered if you'd take these along? We tipped Westacott to cut them from his patch, and we intended putting them with all the others in the churchyard. But then it seemed a bit silly, sir. I mean, they'll wilt down there, in this weather, and your… the little girl might like them in the ward. I know she can't see them yet but these freesias smell nice, sir.'

He reached out and took the flowers wordlessly, too moved to do more than nod his thanks, but Graves-Jones didn't seem to expect thanks. He stepped
back gave one of his little bows from the waist, and withdrew, quietly closing the door. David went into the kitchen, filled a vase and put the flowers inside. His hand shook and his throat felt terribly constricted. He wept then and the relief was immediate. He thought, 'Boyer's right, of course… bad enough here, but it would be a damn sight worse among strangers. I'll give it a go. At least until the end of term…' and he found his gown, shrugged himself into it, and went down the steps just as the bell signalled the start of morning school and his first period with the Lower Third.

2

That was the way of it, not only as far as end of term, and through the summer break, but on through the Michaelmas term to his first Christmas alone.

It was as though his existence, as a man with some useful part to play in life, was a shallow-rooted plant, dependent upon the strength of a cluster of root fibres that ran just below the surface, searching for points of anchorage; another, stronger root perhaps, or an angled rock, or a layer of heavier soil. Each tiny fibre was a part of his identity with the place and some ran deeper than others. One was little Grace's survival, of course, and her slow climb back to a point where hope was definite, corrective operations could be attempted, and she could move on to Great Ormond Street for a period of about six months, they said. Another was the close companionship of Herries and Ellie, backed by the unsentimental but solid comradeship of Howarth, and the sympathy of Barnaby, the two Irvines and even, in his bumbling way, dear old Bouncer. A third fibre was the prescribed rhythm of the school, with its succession of red-letter days and self-made entertainments, particularly the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, in which he featured as relief pianist. But much stronger than any of these was his closer integration with boys at all levels, not only old stagers like Chad Boyer, Dobson, Blades, Winterbourne, Skidmore, McNaughton, Graves-Jones and Ruby Bickford, but later arrivals, some of whom had not even known Beth and the twins.

He made the discovery, as the autumn mists closed in, that the ache in his own heart enabled him to take unexpectedly close-range peeps into the hearts of others, so that he began to mellow in a way that suited the new furrows on his face and the touch of grey in his hair. It was as though he had compressed a couple of decades in six months, converting himself into a more youthful edition of Judy Cordwainer, set in a groove before he was thirty. He was aware
of this but did nothing to counteract it, or not mentally. Physically he made a supreme effort, refereeing and occasionally playing a practice game with the First Fifteen, and accompanying the cross country runs as whipper-in. The season of the year helped to acclimatise him to the rapid change in his character, for the moor, in the late autumn, was at one with his prevailing mood. But what really enabled him to come to terms with his loss was a growing sense of usefulness that might, in time, resolve itself into a definite purpose, of the kind he had had when he and Beth moved into Havelock's last spring.

He might have resigned his housemastership, despite clamorous opposition to the proposal, had it not been for Herries's ruse in making him responsible during the holidays, for the group of boys known as 'The Sunsetters', a group nickname Barnaby had invented for the score or so boarders who lived permanently at the school because their parents were scattered about the dominions, the crown colonies and the protectorates. The label was a play on the imperial claim that Britain still ruled an empire on which the sun never set, and was in no sense a gibe, rather a goodnatured joke, aimed at the separateness of boys who looked upon Bamfylde not as a school but as a home. About half of them were coloured, like the Kassava brothers, the remainder the sons of men with overseas posts who, for one reason or another, preferred to have their children educated in England.

For some years now this expanding group lived on the third floor of the head's house but in September, 1925, the second stage of the new building plan was started and their dormitory was converted into a sick-bay. Herries said, when the builders moved in, 'My common sense tells me I ought to scatter them to their respective houses, P.J., but they're all very much against it. I suppose they think of themselves as a little house of their own, and don't care to lose their identities. Do you think you could make room for 'em? Take 'em over, lock, stock and barrel? Someone will have to when I put my feet up, a couple of years from now.'

David said he would think about it and came up with a plan to extend the junior dormitory at Havelock's by cutting through into the old Remove and the music room beyond. The Remove he said, could be transferred to one end of the woodwork room. One less music room might annoy Rapper Gibbs but was unlikely to trouble anyone else. 'I could get twenty beds in there if the builders went about it the right way,' he said. 'It wouldn't be much of a job. There's no stonework, only partitioning they should have ripped out at the time of the fire but didn't because it was costing so much.'

Herries was enthusiastic and at once switched the builder's men from his third floor and set them at work on the new dormitory but before they were finished David had another thought. 'Why don't we make a recreation room out of the music room?' he suggested. 'The annexe and Remove will give us enough space for beds, and a room of their own will stop the Sunsetters making free with your quarters in the holidays. Besides, only the seniors among them have studies. They ought to have some stake in the place apart from a bed and a locker.'

Herries agreed and the conversion was finished before the end of Michaelmas term, giving the Sunsetters a common room where they could keep their array of overseas journals and play their gramophone, a place where 'Massa' Heilbron, a tall West Indian and a very promising cricketer, could strum his ukelele, and little Kilroy, the fleetest runner in Junior School, could massage his calves, against the day when he would be awarded his running colours, and him only fourteen, the youngest colour on record.

Imperceptibly David found himself saddled with the post of holiday uncle to the Sunsetters but the job, demanding as it sometimes was, proved another fibre binding him to Bamfylde. Even so, when all the roots were down, there were still moments when the transplant seemed very insecure.

They would steal upon him treacherously, always taking him unawares. Sharp, poignant reminders, as when he looked up at the tall windows of Havelock's and saw a maid shaking a duster in the manner of Beth when they were settling in nine months before. Or when, coming out of church, he glanced down the road to the cottage, and saw snowdrops crowding the patch where she had planted her rowan tree. The long winter nights were the worst times, however, when the wind came shrieking down from Middlemoor, rattling the slates and searching out chinks in the old window frames, and he would awake and suddenly find himself harassed and sweating, with the sense of having escaped from a situation in which Beth and the twins were calling from behind a wall of quarry stones as high as the plantation. At times like this he would have to come to terms with the truth all over again.

He broke the habit of Willoughby's sleeping pills. They left him drowsy and not up to his work, but he found another antidote. In October, when the nights had closed in, he dug out his folder of notes on 'The Royal Tigress' and began arranging them into sections, and during the Christmas holidays he actually began to work, and was soon able to lose himself in the surge of Lancastrian and Yorkist armies the length and breadth of England, and the
struggle for the crown that had given him yet another of his Second Form tags, viz.,

In the fight for England's head,
York was white, Lancaster red…

He did not think it would be a very original book but at least it kept his thoughts occupied throughout the small hours, and the sleep that followed a session was free of dreams.