R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (64 page)

'Would you enjoy getting some kind of orchestra together for a production next December? It's a chore, I warn you. We hold the auditions in summer, and rehearse every night throughout Michaelmas term.'

'I should enjoy it. I found time hang rather heavily last term. You see, Melbourne House was close to Bristol, and I had most of my evenings free. I miss the opportunity of getting to a concert now and again and this place… well, it is something of a wilderness, isn't it?'

'It's seemed that way lately,' David said, 'but it never did in Herries's time. We made our own entertainment and a lot of it was very stimulating. I'm
going to do my damnedest to start everything up again, but I should have to rely on your help, Renshaw-Smith.'

'Oh, but you can,' Renshaw-Smith said, seeming to peck with excitement, and David left him, wondering if he knew the boys referred to him as 'Pecker' and had done, since the day of his arrival.

He went next to Howarth to discuss finance in relation to building plans. 'I don't intend to tinker, like the Stoic. I've always believed in Rothschild's dictum – “Buy on a falling market.” With a shrinking waiting-list we need to offer something extra, and get plans for an extension into the new prospectus. God knows, that old one needs rewriting. It always reminds one of a spa holiday guide, about the time of Victoria's Jubilee.'

'And we thought of the Noble Stoic as a new broom,' Howarth said, wryly. 'Well, I'm with you by and large. You recall I foresaw this shortage of cash reacting on us, but don't talk to me about retrenchment. I never did trust that word. It's usually a sluggard's euphemism for parsimony and cowardice. Still, it all comes down to cash in the end, and how the devil do you hope to raise the ten thousand or more that a new classroom block and gymnasium will cost you?'

'From the Old Boys. There's a couple of thousand in the kitty. It's been accumulating and I'm planning a big appeal next Whitsun, when I can corner more than a hundred O.B.s at their annual meeting.'

'You honestly believe you can squeeze eight thousand pounds out of Old Boys? Good God, man, half of them are still looking for jobs, or living on their parents' fat. Boyer, for instance, he's still on his uppers, isn't he?'

Boyer was, or more or less. He had come down with a good enough degree two years ago but had since had to make do with starveling appointments in private schools. He wrote, from time to time, but had not revisited the school and David had the impression he would find it difficult to scrape together the rail fare from the far north. He said, 'I'll get the money somehow but it would help if you took over as O.B. secretary. I've been doing it for six years now, and no complaints, but I don't see how I can combine it with the headship. After all, Howarth, who was it pushed me into this job in the first place?'

'Me,' said Howarth, with one of his frosty smiles, 'but my sponsorship went off at half-cock. I don't mind admitting I had nothing whatever to do with this latest turn-up. That was all Algy's doing, or Algy's and Doc Willoughby's.'

'Willoughby got at Sir Rufus?'

'How do you think our respected Chairman came by that bit of evidence you pocketed from Alcock's desk, the night he died? Willoughby took it to Algy and they hatched the plot between them. They asked Sir Rufus over to dinner, filled him with old port, and set him to work on the waverers. But for God's sake don't let them know I told you and don't thank Willoughby yourself. He's like me that way. Feels a damned fool if he's caught out doing a good turn.'

They began to fit together, all the pieces of the jigsaw that had been assembling from the moment of Alcock's death, but it seemed unlikely now that he would ever know just how the final picture emerged as a likeness of himself. Howarth was right, however, it would never do to probe too deeply. All the same, the information made him glow a little. It meant that he had the full trust of at least two dedicated Bamfeldians apart from Howarth's steady patronage.

He said, 'I always knew you approved, Howarth, but how does old Barnaby feel about it. After all, he's senior to me, and was piqued when I pipped him as housemaster?' but Howarth said, 'Barnaby's purring, so leave him be. He's happy enough. A house is as much as he cares to handle. Besides, he's like me. Too idle to envy you your job. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a year or so, we didn't start wishing to God that you'd run out of steam.'

'Will you take over that Old Boys' job
pro tem?'

'Just long enough to tide you over. Then one of the younger chaps can have it, and I'll put my feet up until I retire. Only another four years, thank God.'

'I can't imagine this place without your crustiness to give it savour. What will you do then, Howarth?'

'Go abroad and die in the sun,' Howarth said. 'I often ask myself why the devil a sane man, with money in the bank, should spend eight months of the year with his coat collar up and his toes to a gas-fire.'

He shelved his forum idea for the time being. It needed more thought, and he was not yet ready to take either Barnaby or Howarth into his confidence. Instinct told him that he would need to win over some of the younger masters, especially Scott, a stern disciplinarian, who had come to them from a prestigious school to replace Carter on the science side and take his place as Outram's housemaster. Scott was forty-eight, and a cut above their usual replacements. He was here, it was said, because of his chest, that played him up in the damp
Thames valley, and a somewhat prickly little man. The best approach to him, David thought, would be a juicy carrot in the form of an improved laboratory, and science was low on his list of priorities just now.

There was one other thing, however, concerning which he consulted nobody. The night before the new term began he checked through his records and traced Hislop's home number, for Hislop, penalised for straightforwardness over the loss of his ill-gotten gains as school bookmaker, was still on his conscience.

The shrewish voice of Mrs Hislop answered the phone and he was glad it was her and not Hislop's father. He said, 'Mrs Hislop? It's Powlett-Jones, calling from Bamfylde. You remember me, I hope?'

'I remember you, Mr Powlett-Jones. I remember everything about that disgraceful business.'

'It's about your boy I'm ringing. It may sound presumptuous on my part, but is there any chance of him wanting to return here? He's still only sixteen plus, isn't he? Of course, if you've got him in elsewhere he'll probably be better off where he is, but I'm acting headmaster and I'd like to have him back, if he wants to come.'

He heard her sharp intake of breath and waited, letting the prospect of a fresh start for Hislop make its impact. Then she said, 'You mean that? You…
want
him back?'

'Yes, I do, Mrs Hislop. You may remember I thought he had been very unfairly dealt with by Mr Alcock but I could put that right now, providing he undertook to work, and toe the line generally. I always did believe in him.'

'Thank you,' she said, and then, after a long pause, 'He's with a private tutor. He seems keen to study for a short-service commission in the Air Force. That awful business changed him. I don't mean for the worse, maybe the opposite, but well… he's never been quite the boy he was when it happened.'

'Would you like to discuss it with him? He could go into the Lower Fifth, and I'd keep a sharp eye on him until he settled down. I know he was happy here.'

'I don't need to discuss it with him,' she said, 'although of course I will. I know he would like to come back, particularly under you. He came to understand precisely how you were placed, and that things were very difficult for you at the time.'

' “Difficult” is an understatement, Mrs Hislop. I came close to getting sacked myself more than once. Can I take it that he'll come then?'

'Yes. When exactly?'

'Right away if you can arrange it. It doesn't matter if he's a week or so late starting term. Bring him over yourself if you like, and we'll have tea.'

'I'd like that. A week, you say? Sunday? That's the best day for me, on account of the business.'

'Sunday will be fine. I'll look forward to it.'

'Right.' And then, with a little difficulty, 'I very much appreciate this, Mr Powlett-Jones, and I know Rex will. Mr Hislop will stand on his dignity but leave him to me. Goodbye for now.'

'Goodbye, Mrs Hislop.'

He rang off, reflecting that one did not always take the privileges of power into consideration, but they were there, as he was beginning to discover. He thought, 'I daresay eyebrows will be raised when Hislop shows up but to hell with that. His reinstatement will make Chris chuckle but she at least will approve.'

And within hours the shut-down Bamfylde dynamo went into action, with cars and attaché-case-carrying railway arrivals, moving up both drives to converge on the grey buildings that sat so incongruously on the ridge, palisaded with leafless trees, moated by seeping fields where veils of mist deadened every sound, converting Bamfylde into a battleship alone in a vast, grey-green sea.

For him there had never been a first day of term like this. It was not merely an occasion for another new boys' tea but an entirely new beginning, with himself feeling rather like Keithley, smallest of the new arrivals, who drifted in at dusk, clutching his overnight case and a plaid rug, and looking as if, given the least excuse, he would drop everything on the study floor and flee across the moor. He said, calling to Grace, 'Look after Keithley, Grace, while I check the last batch in. He's come a long way, haven't you, Keithley?'

'Y-yes, sir… from Manchester. Change at Bristol,' he added, a little pompously.

'By George, that's a long journey for a chap your size! And you made it in one. Bravo! Don't be scared, you're going to like it here, they all do after a day or two, and my daughter will show you the ropes once you've had tea and a warm-up by the fire. He'll be going into Nicolson's, Grace.'

'Well, that's a shame,' she said. 'We've only got three new ones this term, hardly enough for the cake, but Keithley could come, couldn't he?'

'My dear girl, they'll all have to come, not just the Havelock new boys. We can't have the head showing house favourites.'

'Havelock's will always be my favourite,' she said, but added, doubtless for Keithley's benefit, 'Nicolson's is second-best.'

He left her then, ministering to the encumbered Keithley, and went out through the quad door to take the first start-of-term callover by lamplight, for the school's generator batteries were not yet fully charged.

Standing there, on the plinth of the Founder's statue, where Keithley and his peers would soon be making their bow, he gripped the clipboard tighter than necessary, aware of an underswell of emotion and hoping it passed unnoticed by the very few senior boys who would recall Algy Herries standing here, on the first evening of every new term. It was a memorable moment, one to be put under glass, alongside many others – the Kassava brothers, huddled under that dormer window three storeys up; the first overtures of peace between Carter and himself, in the library passage; Algy's white head emerging from the window under the arcade, to demand, of little Daffy Jones, who had won the house match that first spring afternoon, when Ludendorff was still attacking on the Western Front. These memories and many, many others, standing like pennants on a hard-fought battlefield and somehow adjusting to the rhythm of the roll-call, so that he seemed to be checking not merely on the present but also the past. It made him feel much older than thirty-five.

ISLAND IN A TORRENT

1

D
AVID POWLETT-JONES HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT OF HIMSELF as a political animal, and perhaps he was, up to the moment Sir Rufus Creighton offered him the acting headship. After that a streak of parochialism, that had been broadening within him ever since he had been absorbed into Bamfylde, began to spread until the men he had once jested about, stick-in-the-muds like Judy Cordwainer and Rapper Gibbs, became in a sense his prototypes. The overall effect upon him was curious. His personality both narrowed and deepened.

He did not see himself as inward-looking but was honest enough, in reflective moments beside Algy's thinking post, or sitting within earshot of the muted clamour of the quad, to acknowledge a definite shift in the centre of gravity. What happened here under his nose began to assume an importance that someone in close touch with the world outside would have mistaken for extreme insularity.

For a time he resisted it, telling himself that Bamfylde was not really the crossroads of human affairs, that casting round for some means to alleviate little Keithley's homesickness ought not to take precedence over, say, the state of the economy, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, but in the end, after a term or two, he had to admit that it did, and soon abandoned any attempt to keep abreast of national and international affairs. Running Bamfylde was a fulltime job, even when the parent ship of state was on course. When it looked like foundering, as lately, it was comforting to address himself to the problems at hand and turn his back on the world beyond school bounds.