R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (30 page)

He was surprised to learn from Herries that school routine had not been disturbed by more than a ripple or two. They produced their own bacon and vegetables and their milk came from local farms. They had had no newspapers, of course, and Herries was intrigued to hear David's first-hand account, but said, 'I appreciate you taking all this trouble to get back here on the job, P.J., but surely you know me better than to have expected it in the circumstances?'

'It was a chance remark that Carter made over the phone that encouraged me to make the effort,' and he repeated, word for word, what Carter had said.

Herries said, thoughtfully, 'You're very prickly where Carter's concerned,
P.J. Too prickly, if you ask me, but that, off the record, applies equally to him. Do you mind telling me why? I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'

'It isn't important.'

'Oh, but it is. To me and to Bamfylde. My guess is that both of you are pretty well entrenched and disinclined to move now that you each have a house. Why the devil do you let him rub you up the wrong way so easily?'

'It's his general attitude. Not to me personally – you can't expect to make a friend of everyone in an enclosed community like this – but he always gives me the impression he's cockahoop at practising a profession, instead of following a trade or craft. That approach is pretty general among men on the way up from nowhere. What bothers me about post-war Britain is that it's getting worse all the time.'

'Can you be a little more explicit, old chap?'

'Yes. The gap between the collarless and the fancy-tie brigade keeps on widening and it shouldn't, not after the comradeship they shared in the trenches. I was born into the working class and come from a long line of miners. I'm proud of it. Why the hell should I have to apologise for it to a chap like Carter?'

'But, my dear chap, you don't have to,' Herries said, with one of his cherubic smiles. 'And it isn't your background that bothers him.'

'Then what does?'

'Your war record. He hasn't got one to speak of, and he was quick to notice the difference it made to you when you started here.'

'But the war's been over nearly eight years! Nobody here gives it a thought any more.'

'Except you,' Herries said.

'I find it hard to forget. Is that so wrong?'

'It's neither right nor wrong, old son. It's inevitable. You witnessed those eighty-odd Old Boys of mine blown to bits, and you won't ever forget and forgive.'

David said, with some difficulty, 'Does that imply you don't approve of me keeping it in front of the boys? You saw those boys die, too. You knew nearly all of them by their nicknames. I'd say they were still very fresh in your memory.'

'One has to strike a balance,' Herries said. 'That's what education is about. Rationality, tolerance, give and take, call it what you like. Carter has his faults. So have you, and all the rest of us. But he's a first-class man at his subject, and
very sound as a housemaster. He's exam mad, of course, and almost certainly thinks me an old fool for not being, but he has a point. Life
is
getting more competitive and we have to have a modern side here and might do worse than Carter, judging by some of the science men I've interviewed in my time. This is what it boils down to. I'll be gone in just over a year and some new man will move in. My bet is the Governors will appoint a modern man, but whoever he is he'll have to learn to lean hard on you and Carter. So my advice to you is to call a truce.'

He took Algy's advice. His first impulse had been to buttonhole Carter and challenge him about the phone gibe, but he thought better of it. A few days after his return he was approached by Bamfylde's sole Free Stater, Paddy McNaughton, now a leading light of the Sixth. 'I'm in a rare fix, sir,' he said, with the conspiratorial grin that had been common currency between them since the incident with the pistol. 'I volunteered to present the T.U.C. case at the Society's debate tomorrow and I don't know the first thing about it. Can you brief me, sir? The proposition is, “That the Trade Unions were justified in supporting the Miners' Federation in recent strike action'".'

David grinned. 'You're backing a lame horse, aren't you?'

'Oh, sure I am, sir,' said McNaughton, 'but why not? It's a chance to take another crack at The Oppressors. You know the drill sir. Anyone heaving a bomb at Westminster is welcome in Ireland. I only volunteered for devilment, but now I'm stuck with it.'

'Who's opposing?'

'Sanders, sir. He's hot stuff, and does his homework.'

'I'll brief you,' David said, 'and it's lucky you came to me. I was in London last week, and Sanders isn't the only one who does his homework.'

He gave McNaughton several lines of argument to pursue and when the boy had jotted them down he said, 'er… would it be asking too much to get you to second, sir? We could pull the pants off 'em, between us.'

David had taken part in several Sixth Form debates but never on a controversial subject. He said, doubtfully, 'Would that be fair on Sanders?' and McNaughton replied, 'Sure it would, sir. The seconder only has five minutes. All you need do is sum up.'

There seemed no harm in it and secretly he relished an opportunity of speaking up for the miners.

'Very well, then, but only in support of the arguments you put forward, so don't go off at the tangent. You Irish have been doing that for centuries!'

The debate was a cheerful, innocuous affair. Sanders, son of a Conservative candidate in a Liberal-held constituency, was Bamfylde's most accomplished public speaker and had obviously had a briefing from his father. He trotted out all the old saws in reply to McNaughton's passionate defence of the workers, loss of trade, breach of working contracts, readiness to put the nation in jeopardy for a shilling, and so on, but coming from a pleasant chap like Sanders the arguments sounded harmless and David saw them as no more than an exercise in schoolboy polemics. His own speech was brief and to the point. He stressed that the mining community was defenceless against the owners and that their work, vital to the nation, deserved a good working wage and better working conditions. The strike was the only weapon they had against exploitation. He or Paddy or both must have converted some among the audience. The motion was lost, certainly, but by the narrow margin of four votes and Paddy claimed this as a victory.

The sequel was not slow in coming. The next day, entering class to take the Sixth on the Reform Bills of the eighteen-thirties, David found a newspaper cartoon pinned to the blackboard with a thumb tack. It was a particularly lurid one, depicting a leering Bolshevik fishing in British industrial waters, using a bag of bait ticketed '£400,000 Bolshevik subsidy'. The sea in the drawing was marked “
British Coal Dispute"
.

It was the kind of prank that he, and every other master at Bamfylde (with the exception of Howarth and Carter) was expected to take in good part, but somehow, in his present mood, that was asking too much. He said, 'Who owns this sheet of toilet paper? I'm not asking who put it there. Who owns it?'

Sanders rose, looking a little apprehensive. 'It was mine, sir.'

'Where did you get it?'

'Where?'

'Yes, where? It's a simple question isn't it?'

'My… er… my father sent it. With some other news-clippings. After I'd written home for material on the debate, sir.'

Boyer rose from the back, looking, David thought, very glum. 'Nothing personal, sir. Just a joke and we were all in on it, even the chaps who voted with you and McNaughton last night.'

The flicker of anger that had stirred in him subsided but the ember glowed. He waited, getting himself in hand, before crumpling the cartoon and tossing it into the wastepaper basket. 'Right. I don't find it all that much of a joke but I suppose I'm expected to make allowances in the Sixth and I will. However,
while we're on the subject let's jump a couple of generations from the Reform Bills and I'll tell you something you might not know. As far as I'm concerned very few here do know, for I've never made a parade of it, and I wouldn't now if you hadn't sat up and begged for it. I'm a miner's son. I was born and grew up in a Welsh mining community. I saw, at first hand, the kind of deal those chaps get, and have been getting, ever since the English moved in and made a midden out of their valleys. Most of them bring home fifty shillings a week for a five-and-a-half day week underground, where they might die at any moment. From a fall, from fire-damp, from flooding. There are no pithead baths in most of the pits. The absentee owners drawing royalties on seams thousands of feet below the surface are too damned miserly to install them. So the men wash in tin baths before the fire, scrubbed by their women folk. Think about that. Fifty shillings a week, for a man with a wife and family and it costs around four-ten a week to keep one of you fellows here for eight months of the year. But that isn't all, not by a long chalk. When I was a kid younger than anyone here I went off to school one morning leaving behind a father and two brothers, working early shift – four a.m. to midday. When I got home that same night my father and brothers were dead. Their bodies were never recovered. Ewan, my younger brother was sixteen at the time. Now let's get back to the syllabus.'

They were silent and attentive during the remainder of the period. Nobody approached him afterwards, as he half-expected they would, but he felt much better for having blown his top, as he described the outburst to Howarth that evening.

Howarth was mildly amused and said, at length, 'You got quite a kick out of that, didn't you, P.J.?'

'Yes, I did. But I don't fool myself I got through to anyone.'

'You might have. One or two. But I'll give you yet another piece of advice if you care to have it.'

'To work a bit harder at cultivating the Englishman's stiff upper lip?'

'On the contrary. To blow your top more often, and give the Celt an airing every now and again. You'll feel the better for it and it won't do them any harm. Or the rest of us either for that matter. Have a drink.'

It was over and done with as far as David was concerned, but there was an unlooked-for sequel that made nonsense of his outburst in class. A day or so later he was standing before the open window of his own kitchen quarters, looking out on the quad, when he saw a Third Former, Watson Minor,
emerge from the arch with a tuck parcel and call across the quad to Vosper, one of his boys. 'I say, Voss! …There's been a balls-up in parcel handout. This isn't an Outram parcel, it's for Kidbrooke. He's in the Kremlin, isn't he?' Vosper, taking the parcel, made no comment except, 'I'll give it to him,' and disappeared into the main entrance to Havelock's.

David called across, sharply, 'Hi! You there! Come over here, will you?' and Watson turned on his way back through the arch and sauntered over. 'Me, sir?'

'You used a certain word just now, in respect of Havelock's. What was it again?'

Watson looked bewildered for a moment but then he grinned. 'A certain word? You mean… er… “balls-up” sir?'

'No, I don't mean that, although that isn't King's English according to Mr Howarth. I meant “Kremlin". It
was “
Kremlin", wasn't it?'

'Oh… yes, sir.'

'That's new, isn't it? I've never heard Havelock's called “Kremlin” before.'

'Well, no, sir, but it is now, sir. In Outram's that is, and in some of the other houses I think. Is there anything wrong with it, sir?'

Watson, not a particularly bright boy, had already enlisted in The Lump. It would take him four more years to get as far as the Fifth, if he ever did. 'Just what do you know about the Kremlin, Watson?'

'I don't know anything about it, sir.'

'Then why did you say it just now?'

'Well it… it sort of came out, sir. Like I say, the chaps are calling Havelock's the Kremlin.'

'All right, that's all, Watson. Mere curiosity on my part,' and Watson, relieved of the tiresome necessity to rack his brain, trotted off.

After prep that evening David found Boyer and told him of the encounter. 'Did Sanders coin the phrase, Chad?'

'No, sir. It wasn't Sanders.'

'I didn't think it would be. Who did originate it?'

'You're asking me, sir?'

'I'm asking you.'

'Well, as a matter of fact, it wasn't a boy at all. I heard it was one of Mr Carter's. It cropped up when someone in the Lower Fourth made a mess of something they were doing in the lab and caused a fearful stink. Mr Carter said something about 'Stink-bombs being the prerogative of Havelock's, otherwise
known as the Kremlin'. I thought it was a bit thick, sir, but it was just a joke and seems to have stuck, the way some of them do. Like nicknames.'

'That's about it,' David said, 'a nickname. Well, thanks for telling me, and for your information I'm going to follow it to source right now. Don't worry, I won't involve you,' and he strode off through the quad arch and up the short flight of steps into Outram's.

Carter was just dismissing Sanders, his head prefect, with laundry lists and other notices for the board. David waited until the prefect was out of earshot before saying, 'Can you spare a minute, Carter?'