R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (38 page)

'Weren't the boys something of a strain in the circumstances?'

'No,' he flashed out. 'No! …Not once I'd let them see I wasn't to be fooled around with. I got the measure of them in less than a week.'

There was another awkward silence. Still nobody else spoke, and the interview seemed likely to resolve itself into a wary dialogue between himself and the little Indian judge. Sir Rufus said, carefully, 'To sum up, Mr Powlett-Jones, what, in your view, is the most essential factor of a school like Bamfylde?' and David heard himself say, 'I can answer that straight out. A happy atmosphere. If that's there everything else falls into place.'

That, at least, resulted in a shift of glances of the committed and neutral groups. Fourteen pairs of eyes moved as one to his level, then half of them were lowered to the doodle-starred blotters on the table.

Sir Rufus said, quietly, 'Thank you, Mr Powlett-Jones. That's all, I think, unless any other member of the Governing Body would like to ask a question.' There were no questions and after a lapse of a few seconds he got up, bowed towards the chair and walked out.

Back in the little lobby he found he was sweating freely. He said, aloud, 'By God, I need that drink!' and went in search of Howarth and his decanter.

Hoskins, whom he thought of as Grace's dancing professional, came up to the living-room a few minutes after lunch and David, brooding in his study with the door open, heard Grace's squeal of delight as he said, 'New one here, real hot number, Tuppence! You must have heard it on the wireless but this is the first recording to reach the Outback!'

'Put it on! Put it on, Sax,' he heard 'Tuppence' exclaim but Hoskins, briefed in these casual visits, said, 'I'll have to ask your father first. Is he around?'

'I'm in here,' David called. 'Play the damned thing. I shan't get any peace if you don't,' and Hoskins called back, 'Thank
you
, sir! Just the one side,' and in a moment later the half-familiar rhythm of ''Bye, 'Bye, Blackbird' grinding out of the portable, followed by the thuds and squeals that invariably accompanied a 'lesson' in the latest ballroom craze.

It was not by any means soothing music but it helped and he found himself humming the lively refrain.

…So, make my bed and light the light,
I'll be home, late tonight,
Blackbird, 'bye, 'bye!

There was a small oval mirror immediately above the desk and David watched his own grin, thinking, 'Do I really give a damn whether they turn me down or not? What the hell does it matter on what terms I stay? I belong here. Grace belongs here. Beth and Joan are still around somewhere, and so are all the names on that war memorial outside…' and then he heard the gramophone needle screech to an abrupt half and Hoskins say, 'I'm sorry, sir, just trying out a new one. Yes, he's in the study…' and after that whispering and the sound of the door closing on Tuppence and her instructor.

Algy's white head showed round the door. He looked like an elderly,
pink-eyed rabbit, tufted and slightly scared, as he said, 'They're through, P.J. I volunteered to come up with the news.' He came in, shut the door, and stood with his back against it.

'Well?'

'It's… er… good and bad, though I shouldn't say it, not to someone with his hat in the ring. I wouldn't either, if I hadn't started packing and that lets me out. You and Carter broke exactly even. No one would budge an inch. That's why they've been closeted up there for nearly three hours. Haven't even lunched. Scared someone would get at them, no doubt.'

'Who is it, then?'

'Neither of you. Sir Rufus gave his casting vote for Alcock. He wouldn't have, or so he hinted, but for the long-term risk of having either of you serving under the other, and he has a point there. Suppose you or Carter had got it, and the other had decided to soldier on? It wouldn't have worked, would it? School would have been split down the middle in no time at all. As it is, you're both level pegs under a new man, with impressive qualifications. He'll have to lean equally on the pair of you.'

He felt no real pang of disappointment. Rather relief that Carter had not succeeded in pipping him. He had not exchanged a word with Alcock, the bowed, beetling man from Cape Town, so he could form no opinion how he was likely to set about following an institution like Algy Herries. 'Better the devil you know…' they said, but it wasn't true in this case. Carter would have made a shambles of Algy's carefully erected edifice and as things had turned out Carter wasn't getting the chance to monkey with the place. That was a gain, he supposed, and his mind raced ahead to a point when, conceivably, today's ordeal might be repeated, for somehow he couldn't see himself leaving Bamfylde now.

He said, 'How old is Alcock, sir?' and Herries said, 'Fifty-three. Late for it, I'd say. He could stay seven or twelve years, depending how he feels, or how well off he is. I think he's pretty well fixed for cash and will likely put his feet up at sixty. There's one other thing. Nothing to do with today's business.'

'Yes, sir.'

'For Heaven's sake call me “Algy” to my face from here on. I've always has a very soft spot for you, P.J. So has Ellie.'

David turned away, looking down on to the forecourt through the window he had last seen Beth drive off in the three-wheeler, and had raised his hand in response to Grace's wave. He said, at length, 'I'll never have another friend like
you, Algy. That goes for most of us here, I imagine,' but Herries said, fruitily, 'Oh, come now, old sport, don't talk as if I was tucked away at Stone Cross, with Ferguson and Cordwainer. I'm only in the next parish but one, and I'll be over here at least once a month, I promise you.'

'Well, I'm glad to hear that,' And then, 'What sort of chap
is
he, Algy?'

'Alcock? Difficult to say. An activist, judged on his record. He could have done much better than Bamfylde if he'd been ten years younger. Very quiet. No nonsense about him. Not much sense of humour, either, and that'll hinder him unless he develops one. However, we might have done worse. As for you, I'll risk offence by telling you something no one else would, not even Howarth. I admire your pluck for trying but you weren't ready for it. It would have been a gamble, and Bamfylde isn't something I'd care to stake in a lottery, even with the dice loaded in my favour. Can you take that, David?'

'Why not? It's true.'

'Then come on down and I'll introduce you. The others have gone off in high dudgeon, all sharing a taxi. Carter's already made his bow. The king is dead. Long live the king!'

They went out, passing the side table where Hoskins's new record arrested in the middle of a chorus, still lay on the portable.

''Bye, 'bye, blackbird,' David said, and when Algy muttered 'What?' he said it was nothing, just a private joke for Sax Hoskins and Tuppence.

'In a place like this, distinguished for nicknames, you ought to find a more dignified one for that mite,' said Algy.

2

The letter came by the afternoon post, an innovation since the Challacombe sorting office had acquired a van for its country round.

He saw it lying on the tray on the landing when he came up from afternoon classes to make himself a pot of tea before devoting an hour or two to the final chapter of 'The Royal Tigress', now standing in a foot-high pile on his desk and crowding all his other correspondence to one side.

He saw at first glance that it was from Julia and that she was still in America. With a feeling of elation he carried it into the living-room, and settled to read it slowly, relishing every line. But then, his eye leaping down the page and catching a phrase, he read swiftly, imbibing its contents like a draught
of bitter medicine:

…They tell me it takes about eight days door to door for a letter to cross The Pond, Davy. So, by the time you get this, I will have been married. Mrs Hiram Ulysses Sprockman, no less. Sonorous but… well… rather sweet once you get used to it. This will come as a shock to you, but I'm not apologising for that. I'd apologise to a little man but you're not a little man. Given a few years you'll be the biggest one Bamfylde has ever seen. Everything I said to you the night you asked me to marry you still holds good. I would have been a terrible flop as a schoolmaster's wife, worse even than as a parson's wife, for parsons, these days, are often anxious to get in on the act and keep up with the latest fads and fashions. A good schoolmaster isn't so daft. He tends to adapt with more dignity. I'll always remember your proposal as the greatest compliment anyone ever paid me. Much greater than Arthur's and Hiram's, for neither really knew me as you did. But that wouldn't make it right in anything but the purely physical sense and as regards that I give you full marks. Ten out of ten, for loving. It would do for most men but again, not for you, not since you've matured and distilled all you learned and suffered in France into a kind of – how can I put it? – a rejuvenating elixir. For the exclusive benefit of generations of Bamfeldians.

That elixir would have been watered down if I had been around when it was being mixed, stirred and seasoned, and I don't mean by this you shouldn't ever think of marrying again. You should. Given the kind of luck you once had, and deserve again, you'll make some lucky wench a wonderful husband, providing she has the sense to give you your head, and not go for the old impossible – changing a man into her image of what she thinks he ought to be.

As to me marrying Hiram, well, I'm not pretending I'm in love with him and I've told him so, over and over again. I didn't tell you but he had already proposed twice when we met again by chance that time. But Hiram doesn't need your kind of wife. He's been married to commerce ever since he
discovered what fun it was to make money. What he needs – what he is getting – is a mistress-cum-manageress. Apart from that, he's kind and considerate and intelligent, as you were quick to notice.

Well, there we are, Davy. I've cut the knot for you and left you free to push on and I still don't know whether or not the Governors gambled on you or kept you in cold storage. Touching that, will you let me give you one last piece of advice? Stay where you are, no matter what. I couldn't say why but I know Bamfylde is right for you, and whilst you'd do a good, conscientious job elsewhere it wouldn't be an inspired one.

My best love to little Grace. I adored her. She'll grow up to be a credit and a solace to you.

My love to you, too, Davy. I'll never forget you and if you care to write and keep in touch I'd always be happy about that, although I leave this entirely to you.

Very, very affectionately,

Julia

He drifted across to his study and sat down at his littered desk, trying hard to come to terms with the new situation. Julia married. Julia's cheerfulness and stimulus denied him. And this, on a day when he had to begin all over again and practise his trade under the cold eye of a stranger.

His first reaction was one of bitterness but almost at once resentment was reduced to indignation that she could have been so damned secretive and left him half-hoping, despite her unqualified refusal of marriage. But then, looking out on the moor, shimmering in the heat haze as far as the lip of the plateau where he had walked into the thunderstorm the day another woman was lost to him, a spring of common sense welled out of his resentment. It wasn't really ruthlessness on her part. Behind it was discernment, of a kind not vouchsafed to many women, with their eye on the main chance. As man and wife they might have made it but not as consorts, for a woman like her would never have been able to get Bamfylde into his kind of focus. In the end, she would have lost patience, first with it and then with him, and there would have been, as she had warned him, compromise on an ever-enlarging scale. A man shouldn't compromise with his search for personal fulfilment. He could only
compromise with a creed, Carter's kind of creed, that was really no more than a set of prejudices.

Well, that was that. Now, all that remained, he supposed, was to decide on an approach to their relationship in the future and he found the answer to that almost at once. What was the point of keeping up an intermittent correspondence? Where was there sense in torturing oneself with sensual images of a vigorous, clear-skinned body stretched on a bed, the kind that would come to mind every time he sat down to write to her? Howarth had probably done that with the memory of Amy Crispin and what had it brought him but hardening of the emotional arteries, and a constant reminder of wasted years? He cleared a space on his desk and wrote, on a sheet of Bamfylde notepaper:

My Dear,

I didn't get the headship. We have a new man… not Carter, thank God. I'm staying on here indefinitely, partly because I can't be bothered to change, but mostly, I think, because I still have a notion I owe the place something. Congratulations to both of you. You made a neater, swifter job of pulling out of the Sargasso Sea than I did, and you're clearheaded enough to stay out. Good luck always, Julia dear.

Very affectionately,

Davy

IMPASSE

1

L
OOKING BACK ON THE PERIOD OF HIS LIFE THAT HE CAME TO think of as 'the impasse years', Powlett-Jones could never be sure of the precise moment when the shadow first touched them, when he and the rest of the rump became unpleasantly aware that one era had ended and another, stormy and cheerless, had begun.

It must have been during the last few weeks of Algy's reign, between his first formal handshake with Alcock on the day of the appointment and the final night of term, when he sat below the dais in Big Hall helping Skidmore with the presentations at Algy's farewell supper.

It was then, looking directly up at the new man sitting on Algy's right hand, and noting his impassivity during the farewell address, that he finally acknowledged Alcock's implacability, for no man, he reasoned, could be completely unmoved (as Alcock obviously was) by Algy's valediction, a subtle and wholly unselfconscious blend of pathos, humour, gallantry and profound resignation. But there might have been earlier indications of what lay ahead, for he recalled a curious incident in Barnaby's study, a day or two after he and Carter had finally buried the hatchet – 'a couple of rejects here to console one another' as Carter had put it, and very handsomely David thought, considering the bitterness of their feud over a stretch of more than eight years.