R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (31 page)

'Certainly. About Saturday's house match? Come inside, old man,' and he led the way into his ground-floor study. His affability, as always, was deceiving. He was the kind of man who used forms of address like 'old man' and 'my dear chap' as camouflage. David followed him inside and closed the door.

'It's about a remark you made in the lab a day or so ago. You referred to my house as the Kremlin.'

Carter's red-rimmed eyes blinked rapidly. For a moment he seemed baulked but he made a quick recovery.

'I did? Well, what of it? Don't you make jokes in class sometimes?'

'Not that kind of joke, Carter.'

'What the devil are you driving at?'

'You know bloody well what I'm driving at. It was a personal gibe at me, on account of the part I took in the Upper School debate. Or maybe what I told the Sixth two days ago.'

It was being challenged in his own den that nettled Carter, so much so that David saw him as he had never seen him during all the years they had sparred together. His jauntiness fell away and with it that shrewd command of tongue that usually enabled him to get the better of their skirmishes. He jumped up, red in the face, stuttering and shouting, 'How
dare
you bully me in my own house! I've always thought you a bounder, Powlett-Jones, but there are limits
– limits
, you hear? And you're exceeding them!'

'Doesn't it occur to you that you did just that in the lab? You as good as accused me of being in Russian pay. And within the hearing of boys I have to teach!'

'I did
no
such thing! I made a small joke at your expense. How many have you made at mine since you came here? I… I won't continue this discussion, d'you hear?'

'I can hear. They can hear you across the quad, I daresay. But you will continue it, until I get an apology. Just what is it about me that makes you behave like a police stooge?'

He had never thought to see a man so beside himself with rage and the streak of malice he had always nurtured for this one man at Bamfylde enjoyed the spectacle, one that would have embarrassed him in different circumstances. 'God bless my soul, you're the right one to come in here talking like that, I must say! Ever since you set foot in the school you've tried to foist your filthy principles and… and disloyalty on the boys. I'm not alone in thinking so, either!'

'Who else, Carter?'

'Alderman Blunt, for one, and other Governors and parents I've talked to. I'm hanged if I know why you haven't been asked to resign before this! You wouldn't stay here ten minutes if I had my say!'

'So long as you haven't I'm in no danger. But at last we seem to be getting somewhere. “Filthy principles” you said. And “disloyalty". Disloyalty to whom, Carter?'

'Why, to the country, to the type of parent who sends his son here to get an education. Your entire approach to your work is… is slanted, twisted in favour of class hatreds and destructive forces. But I'll not stand here and…'

'You'll stay until we've had this out, Carter. You'll do it if I have to pin you down in that tinpot throne of yours. Disloyalty, is it, eh? Was it disloyal on my part to spend three years in those bloody trenches, fighting for trench-dodgers with gammy knees? That knee of yours came in handy, didn't it? It enabled you to play soldiers when there was a real war on your doorstep.'

He hadn't meant to go that far and regretted it the moment it was out. It was not that he failed to view Carter in this light. He had heard too much about 'gammy knees' and 'faulty tickers' to believe Carter's explanation of his discharge on the eve of his draft crossing to France, but it was a cheap, easy gibe, of the kind he would have despised in the mouth of another opponent. It lit another fuse under Carter, however, who began to dance with rage, his little tripping movements bringing him closer to David, who was standing with his back to the door. And then, to add to the absurdity of the scene, Carter began pushing and he pushed back, so that neither of them heard or saw the
door open and close again. When they circled, however, there stood Herries, watching them from just over the threshold, and it seemed to David that he had materialised through the ceiling or floorboards.

'For God's sake! Pull yourselves together both of you! I heard you from the Founder's statue and I daresay others did too, apart from the boys in your house, Carter!'

They separated, a couple of admonished Second Formers, caught scuffling in the dormitory after silence bell. Then Carter began to bleat, and it seemed to David he was very close to tears.

'It was Powlett-Jones, Headmaster… he came in here making the vilest accusations… I told him to go but he wouldn't… would n't…' and suddenly, to David's dismay, he did crumple, slumping down in his chair, whipping off his pince-nez glasses and pretending to polish them with a piece of tissue.

Herries said, 'Take yourself off, Powlett-Jones. We'll go into this later,' and David went, out of the study, down the passage and into the quad that was empty, so that he guessed prep bell had gone, although he did not remember hearing it.

As a housemaster he was exempt from prep-taking, unless deputising for a colleague, so he went straight upstairs to his living-room and poured himself a whisky. He was pouring another, and wondering wretchedly about the outcome of this extraordinary scene, when there was a tap on the door and Herries entered in response to his gruff invitation. Algy said, bitterly, 'I'll take one myself if you're making free with them,' and sat heavily on the padded window seat. David poured the drink, adding a touch of soda.

'You don't have to tell me,' he said. 'I know it if Carter doesn't. We both made damned fools of ourselves and if he'll accept an apology I'll offer one.' and when Herries, sipping slowly, made no reply, 'Did he tell you his version of it?'

'About the crack in the lab? Yes, he did, and made the same offer as you in that respect.'

'It was about even,' David said, glumly. 'We both behaved like Second Formers. Did anyone else hear us?'

'If anybody did you can wager it will be all over the school by dormitory bell.' He looked up, knitting his shaggy eyebrows. 'Not so good for discipline, is it?'

'Not good at all,' David said, resisting an insane impulse to chuckle.

'It was that final taunt of yours that did the damage. You hit him where it
hurt like the devil, and you had no excuse for it. I warned you about that the night you came back from town.'

'He made some pretty wild accusations himself.'

'Why the devil didn't you go when he asked you? Why didn't you write him? Or come to me? How is either one of you going to bury the hatchet after this? I'm hanged if I know why I should be that concerned, I've only a year or so to go.'

'But you are concerned.'

'Good God, man, of course I am! This place is my life. I've put twenty-three years into it. Given it all I've got! Do you think I can turn off my love for it like… like a tap?'

'I know you can't, sir. What's to be done then? Do you want my resignation? Or his? Or a matched pair, maybe?'

'You know better than that,' growled Herries. 'Any other bright suggestions?'

'I could apologise in writing. Admit I lost my temper, and make no reference to the Kremlin business. That would smooth his feathers, if I know Carter.'

'It would still leave yours ruffled.'

'Yes, it would. But I'd do that much for you after all you've done for me. And mine.'

He saw the older man's expression brighten a little as he said, 'Well, that would be a start. Seems to me a bit one-sided but you're young enough not to bother about that. Yes, I know, Carter's only a few years older, but he's always seemed to belong to my generation more than yours. I don't know why, but he has. You write that letter, and send a boy straight over with it. Then we'll see what happens.' He sighed. 'It's all so childish when you think about it. People say schoolmasters end up by treating all adults like Third Formers, and dim-witted ones at that, but it isn't really so. The truth is, most of 'em revert to Third Formers in their forties. Sometimes they don't even wait that long.'

'Suppose I took the letter over myself?'

'You'd probably find Outram's out of bounds and sentinels posted. He's not so resilient as you, P.J.'

He got up, nodded and drifted out in that soft, floating way of his. David sat for a long time looking out on the orange sunset over the moor but without appreciating it. Presently, he got up and went across to his desk. On a sheet of Bamfylde paper he wrote,

My dear Carter;

I behaved like an ass and present my apologies. We could have talked this out like adults. The fact that we didn't was my responsibility, not yours.

Very sincerely,

David Powlett-Jones

As soon as end-of-prep bell rang he went out on to the landing and caught little Hobson scurrying up to the junior dormitory, telling him to give the letter to Carter personally but not wait for an answer. Then he went down and out across the cricket-field, half-shrouded in violet dusk, and heady with the scent of grass cuttings, wondering if Beth would have approved his backdown, or merely laughed at them both, saving her sympathy for Algy Herries. It was imponderable, but he did recall what she had said on the occasion of a previous quarrel, about 'there being a Carter in every school, office or factory, from here to Land's End'.

By the time he got back for supper Carter's reply lay on his desk. It was a brief as his own but more guarded. It said:

My dear Powlett-Jones,

I accept your apology. I should not have lost my temper, in that fashion. It was unprofessional on my part, as was my remark in the laboratory.

Sincerely,

Trevor S. Carter

Unprofessional. It was a curious word to use in the circumstances. He stood by the window, watching summer darkness fall across the moor. It was not a reconciliation on either man's part. More of a truce, each agreeing to stay within his own lines.

1

T
HE BELL IN HIS BRAIN, TOLLING AN INTERMITTENT KNELL FOR some sixteen months now, was stilled by Grace's homecoming, in the first week of the Michaelmas term, 1926.

The intervals between its clamour had been lengthening all summer, not because he missed her the less, but because there was always so much to do, so many claims upon his attention, so that he saw the wisdom of Herries's insistence he stayed on as housemaster, and even enlarged his responsibilities by adding the Sunsetters to the Havelock roll.

Grace's return took priority over everything that September, when summer lingered on into autumn, and a record number of thirty-eight boys arrived, eight of them coming to Havelock's, but there were partings as well as greetings. He would miss Chad Boyer badly. Of all the links he had formed with boys who had come and gone in the last eight-and-a-half years, Boyer had forged the strongest, and would be the most difficult to replace after he went up to University to read modern history and economics.

'I'll keep in touch, I promise,' he said, when he marched off to summer camp at Tidworth Pennings with the Corps, on the final day of term, and David hoped he would. It might prove useful to get Boyer's private opinion of any innovation he had in mind. Having spent nine years on the moor, Boyer was as dedicated a Bamfeldian as Herries himself.

Helen Arscott, the businesslike Second Form mistress who had replaced Julia Darbyshire, took a fancy to Grace on sight and Grace responded, perhaps because, in the child's mind, her manner matched so many 'let's-brush-our-teeth' sisters and nurses of the last sixteen months. She still limped, and was under orders to persist in her exercises, but the surgeon's prophecy regarding
her facial scars was fulfilled. They were hardly noticeable now, no more than a flattish area of tissue, spreading from below the eye to the sweep of the chin – Beth's chin, as he noted, swinging her joyously out of the station taxi and hugging her close.

Ellie Herries wept, as he knew she would, and they all trooped in procession up to his old bachelor quarters, overlooking the forecourt, where Grace was ceremoniously installed. She seemed a little overawed by her reception, but soon settled down under the sharp, no-favourites eye of Helen Arscott, who promised her seven hours' tuition each week.

David found the child's gravity very appealing. Months of dragging pain, and a longer period of convalescence, had left its mark on her, but in a way that one soon came to accept. Somewhere along the line she had acquired the patience of a serious-minded child twice her age, offset by a rather comic dignity, that showed in her determination to do everything for herself and break out of the invalid cocoon. Her approach to him was almost maternal, as though someone had coached her in the need to fill the gap in his life and sometimes, watching her slyly, David was reminded of a string of Victorian heroines: Beth in
Little Women
, Little Nell in
The Old Curiosity Shop
and Eva in
Uncle Tom's Cabin
. She was going to be pretty, despite the terrible mauling she had received in the accident. Her hair was a glossy black, curling at the ends, and her eyes as large and brown as Beth's, with identical high cheekbones and dimpled chin. And yet, in another way, she reminded him of his Rhondda nieces, for she was Celt in complexion and build. She had a Celtic imagination too, with a whiff of Beth's Cockney humour added, not the irreverent humour of her mother, but what Herries called 'the stand-off-and-chuckle' brand. 'That's the Welsh in her,' he added. 'You Taffys can laugh at yourselves more than most, even when you're singing.'

In no time at all she became a tremendous favourite with the boys. Paddy McNaughton, the Irish boy, was a friend of hers because he treated her as an equal, but of all the boys in Havelock's she seemed to favour Winterbourne, perhaps because Winterbourne took such an active interest in her, dating from a premonition in the cave beside Chetsford Water, that she had survived and needed help.

The first time David became aware of this relationship was one evening when he looked in to say goodnight, and found her sitting up in her dressing gown, sketching. She was hard at work on a crayon sketch of old Hodge's pony, the one selected for her first riding lessons in their cottage days. The background
of the drawing was recognisably Hodge's broken-down stables, on the eastern shoulder of Stone Cross Hill, and he exclaimed, 'Hi, where did you learn to draw as well as that? In hospital?'