R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (51 page)

He found the two letters on his hall table, assuming they had come by the late afternoon post, that rarely yielded anything of interest. One, from Christine, was a crackling account of her first week's canvass in the constituency, enclosing a duplicate of the cutting Alcock had just shown him. It was overscored,
'Look who is stealing my headlines! Not to say a cabinet minister's!'

He opened the other letter, bearing the imprint of the literary agent he had chosen at random from the
Artists' and Writers' Year Book.
He read it at first without taking in the contents but then, re reading it, he uttered a shout of glee. The agents had found a publisher for 'The Royal Tigress', Millards, a firm specialising in educational books, and were offering an advance of one hundred pounds, on a royalty of six per cent on the first five thousand copies and ten per cent thereafter. The agent enclosed the publisher's offer, and the letter quoted from a reader's report in what David regarded as flattering terms. 'A neglected period extremely well researched… readability one seldom finds in work of this kind… human insight into characters usually seen as pasteboard figures in a text book… exciting blow by blow descriptions of the major battles… a firm grasp of military strategy, particularly that of Edward IV…' and so on. He sat in the embrasure of his study window, looking out over a moor touched by the first kiss of spring, savouring his personal triumph and a sense of achievement
that reduced Alcock and all his works to insignificance. He had never really imagined a reputable publisher would pay good money for the book. In the far-off days when he had begun it, he saw it as a kind of private joke between himself and Beth and later, after her death, he had resumed it as a means of keeping gloomy night-thoughts at bay. Later, when the theme and the period took hold of him, he had enjoyed writing and rewriting the battle scenes, and making fresh guesses at the principal actors in the long drama. Now, with the offer of a hundred pounds in his hands, the stack of manuscript that had occupied an undusted corner of his desk for so long had a real place in the pattern of his life and he picked up the carbon copy of the dedication page and read,
'To My Wife, Beth, who never ceased to urge me to write this book'.
He thought, 'By God, I should have liked her to have shared this moment… but she will in a way, for young Grace will be madly excited. I'll tell her, of course, but the others… Howarth, Barnaby and so on, they can wait until the printed version actually appears.' There was one exception, however, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Chad Boyer, now in his final year at Cambridge, saying nothing of his recent confrontation with Alcock but telling him about 'The Royal Tigress', and adding that he would be delighted to see him if he could get down during the vacation.

3

Knowledge that the book was in the pipeline (earliest date of publication was September) kept him cheerful for the remainder of the term. For the first time in more than eighteen months Bamfylde saw Pow-Wow Jones as the older hands among them recalled him in Algy's time, a jester who yet managed to convey to them something of the grandeur of British history, who scratched among the trivia of text-book names and treaties for something that could link dry-as-dust facts to today's headlines in the press, who was not above telling the Fifth and Sixth Forms risque stories of Lord Melbourne, and Madame du Barry, and resorted, in Lower School periods, to a repertoire of jingles and tag-lines, in order to fix a date or an event in the memories of boys who might otherwise have made their minds a blank until the first clang of the dismissal bell. He still infiltrated current affairs into his Upper School lessons, sometimes spending an entire period discussing the League of Nations, the seven-and-a-half-hour working day laid down under the Coal Mines Act, or the end of the Allied occupation of Germany. He had, that year, a particularly bright Sixth and
an unusually quiescent Lower Fourth, so that he was able, almost effortlessly, to lose himself in work and outdoor activities, such as O.T.C. band-practice and the tail end of the cross-country season. Havelock's, inspired perhaps by his own keen interest in running, won the cross-country shield that term for the first time in school history, and this, in its small way, was another personal triumph. He also began to take a desultory interest in the work of young Renshaw-Smith, the music master who had replaced Rapper Gibbs, an aesthetic-looking twenty-four-year-old, devoted to his subject but inclined to be nervous and obviously terrified by Alcock's occasional appearance, at a choral society or church choir rehearsal. David did what he could to pump confidence into the man, telling him he was just in time to prevent the virtual extinction of musical interests in the school, a sparetime activity that Algy had done so much to foster. David went along to one or two choral society rehearsals himself, and was moved, as he always was, by the sexless voices of the juniors singing traditional songs, like 'Greensleeves' and 'Gaudeamus', always among his favourites.

Howarth and Barnaby, noticing his cheerfulness, made characteristic comments. Howarth said, 'Glad to see you perking up again, P.J. Must be Carter's absence,' and when David denied this, saying that old Carter wasn't half bad once you got to know him, Howarth smiled his wry smile and added, 'Well, then, it's probably the relief that accompanies a burst boil, old son. You've thrown down the gauntlet and that bounder hasn't the guts to pick it up.'

'That's nearer the mark,' David conceded, but he was able to improve on this when Barnaby, marking the same rise in spirits, quoted his favourite Horace – 'The beardless youth, his tutor being dismissed, delights in horses, dogs and the sunny expanse of turf.'

'Not strictly applicable,' David said, 'but Horace can probably tell you how I'm disposed towards the Noble Stoic, now that I've told him to jump in the river – how about “
Ignemgladio scrutare"?
Do I have to translate?'

'No,' Barnaby said, mildly, 'but I could quote back at you in the same context. “Sometimes it is folly to poke the fire with the sword” – a proverbial phrase, I believe, don't ask me the source. If I were you, P.J., I'd let things ride for a term, and give us all a much-needed breather.'

Barnaby got his wish, at least through the fag-end of the tight rope term, and up to the time he went off, with half a dozen Sunsetters, on a walk along Hadrian's Wall. David would have liked to accompany him but it would have meant leaving Grace alone, for they had made no arrangements to go into
Wales, or up to town to visit Beth's folk. He remained Bamfylde-based, therefore, spending his time riding and walking with her over the plateau.

Sometimes, when they were mounted, they pushed as far as Chetsford Water, where he told her, for the first time, of his despairing tramp through the storm the day her mother and her twin sister were killed, and how young Winterbourne, no more than fourteen then, had taken charge of him and piloted him back across the sodden moor to learn that she herself had a sporting chance.

The story touched her deeply, for she had always been close to Winterbourne, and had never ceased to acknowledge the part he had played in helping her to adjust after a year in hospital. 'Spats and Sax Hoskins are the very nicest boys we've ever had at Bamfylde,' she said, and he replied, smiling, 'Well, let's settle for the fact that they're among the most original. It's a funny thing, but the originals are usually the easiest to get along with.'

He gave her a shrewd, sidelong glance, as she kicked her pony into a trot and passed him on the down-slope to the river bottom, a healthy-looking eleven-year-old, or coming up to eleven in a week or so, with a ruddy complexion and no sign of a handicap as she sat her pony. A year or so ago she had continued to remind him poignantly of Beth, but lately he had begun to see her more as a miniature of his own sister, Megan, when she was flitting up and down the steep streets of the Valley, before the war. Living here, growing up among so many boys, she had a quality of self-confidence not given to many girls of her age, and it might stand her in good stead when she reached the proverbial awkward age. She would never, so long as she lived, show embarrassment in the presence of the male animal, and that was something he supposed, for even his tomboyish sisters had blushed on occasion. 'Somebody,' he pondered, 'has done a good job on Grace, and I can't really believe it was me. It took me all my time to ride out of the shock of that bloody awful day… Maybe she's right, and it was Winterbourne, with his painting, and Sax Hoskins, with his foxtrots, and any number of others who went out of their way to help at the time.'

They got back to school about five o'clock, having left the horses at Stone Cross Farm, and walked up, and there, framed in Big School arch, was Brigadier Cooper, his personal champion on the Governing Board. He noticed at once that the old warrior looked bothered, as though planning a foray across the North-West Frontier that might cost the lives of men.

He said, briefly, 'Been hanging around waiting for you since early afternoon. Like a word if you're free. Where can we go?' and when David suggested his
quarters he said firmly, 'No, your little lass and the butler will be there fussing with tea. It's a private word I want. How about the planty?'

'Suit yourself, Briggy,' David said, and they went off across the football field, past Algy's thinking post, to the coppice marking the school's north-eastern border, now showing green where larches and the odd horse-chestnut broke the phalanx of Scots firs.

'Thought you might like to know what's going on,' mumbled the Brigadier. 'That chap is after your scalp and means to get it!'

'Jolly good luck to him, but somehow I don't think he will.'

The brigadier's salt-and-pepper brows knitted 'Not so sure, P.J. He's a devious devil, and he's going to work in what I consider a thoroughly under-hand way. That's why I'm here, d'ye follow?'

'No,' David said, 'but I'd like to. You mean he's approached some of the more conservative Governors, I imagine?'

'He's got at that dry old stick, Sir Rufus, for one. And that tyke, Blunt, who still seems to have it in for you over that memorial rumpus. The hard core that never really took to Algy or to Algy's way of running the show.'

'Is he still flying that damned silly kite about my right to air political opinions on a public platform?'

'No, he's played that down so far but he'll bring it forward. It's his strongest card with that bunch. Matter o' fact, I did a reccy as soon as I discovered what was afoot. Got the results here,' and he fumbled in his Norfolk jacket, producing a crumpled scrap of paper on which he had written some notes under alphabetical headings. 'Here it is –
(a)
Claims you spearhead staff opposition to everything he attempts,
(b)
You yourself commit acts of indiscipline.'

'Such as?'

'You got up that petition about Carter's boy, the one he intended to sack. Dam' lot o' nonsense, sacking a boy for smoking in the bushes. Standard punishment for getting caught has been six of the best for time out of mind. Then there was that Hislop business – he made hay of that, implying you were encouraging gambling.'

'Anything else?'

'Yes, the most serious allegation to my mind. He says your teaching methods are eccentric, that you don't stick to the syllabus, and refuse to base your teaching on previous exam papers, thus prejudicing boys sitting for school-leaving cert. For good measure, he claims you use historical doggerel that was out of date when he was a boy. What the hell did he mean by that, P.J.?'

'Aide-memoires I use in Lower School,' said David, and quoted the famous 'All-Boys-Naughty-Won't-Memorise-All-Those-Horrid-Hateful-Battles-To-Bosworth', explaining to a baffled brigadier its use as a reminder of a string of fifteenth-century battles.

'But that's damned good!' exclaimed Cooper. 'If someone had taught me that when I was a nipper I'd have soon had those bloody battles off pat! Fact is, I can't recall any of 'em but Hedgeley and Hexham. They stuck in the mind somehow.'

'How did you get all this?' David asked, steering him back to the point, and Cooper said, winking, that 'he had put the ferret in', his usual practice when he wanted to prod rumours into the open. Alcock, it seemed, hadn't tackled a single Old Boy on the Board, and had been careful in his general approach, but had inevitably made one or two blunders, so that information of the backstairs campaign had leaked.

In spite of maintaining a casual front David was more worried than he was prepared to admit, even to himself. Championship of Hislop was one thing, and so, to an extent, was his loyalty to Carter over the smoking incident, but it was humiliating to learn that Alcock was calling his teaching to account. He saw, too, that the references to his free-ranging current affairs sessions was merely a lead-in to a direct attack on his political opinions, opinions that Tory Governors would almost surely regard as subversion of the young. He decided, therefore, to test this outright and said, 'Regarding my public support of a Labour candidate, how do you feel about that personally, Briggy?'

'Bound to be frank. Don't care for it,' Cooper said. 'All the same, I'm not such an ass as to think we can proscribe a man's politics in his free time. Neither is Alcock, I imagine, and that's why he's played it down while the Socialists are in office. There'd be one hell of a row if Fleet Street got hold of a story you were being pressured to resign on that account. Wouldn't do any of us a dam' bit o' good, would it?'

'No,' David said, 'and I told him that.' They stopped to retrace their steps at the point where the plantation turned a right-hand angle. 'How do you regard it, then? He couldn't get me kicked out, could he? Not on this kind of evidence?'

'It's possible,' Cooper said, thoughtfully, 'but even if he failed you'd have trouble living it down. I've had a lot of experience of committee work, and learned enough to realise that all this is doing you real harm. What you do about it is your affair. My responsibility stops at letting you in on what's being
said behind your back. You could confront the bounder, I suppose.'