R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (65 page)

It was a conscious withdrawal, for the plight of Bamfylde, and the frightful disarray of the world outside, were inseparably linked. His acting headship
began at a time when politicians had abandoned all serious attempts to solve the unemployment problem, when processions of sullen men trudged south to the capital to voice their grievances, when America, for so long a country said to be capable of achieving anything, was reeling under the blows dealt by the Wall Street crash of October, 1929, when bizarre adventurers like Ivar Kreuger, Swedish match king, were bankrupting governments, when the optimism of the 'twenties had spent itself and the League of Nations, hope of liberals the world over, was being scuttled by Japan.

These events, remote as most of them were, rebounded on Bamfylde, destroying confidence in traditional values and inducing a general shortage of cash. Warned well in advance by the prescient Howarth, David had expected school numbers to fall but the steepness of the drop surprised and dismayed him.

In 1928, shortly after Algy had retired, they had mustered three hundred and ninety-one. By the spring of 1932 they were down to under three hundred, with a greatly reduced waiting list. Parents, having a hard struggle to make ends meet, tended to encourage boys to leave at seventeen, or even sixteen, instead of letting them progress to the Sixth and move on to university. There were noticeably fewer majors and minors on the roll, for often a father whose eldest son had done well at Bamfylde left younger sons at their local grammar schools. The modest increase in fees was paid but the belt-tightening it produced could be seen in the waiting-list. Indeed, the only marginal advantage gained from the slump was the comparative ease in finding trained servants, or masters with academic qualifications that would have gained them more important appointments in better times.

For all this, he turned away from Baldwin's policy of retrenchment, and was aided and abetted by Algy Herries, to whom he went, in the Easter break of his first year.

It was not the first time he had sought Algy's advice. Often, during that first tight-rope term, he lured Algy into his quarters on the excuse of a glass of Old Boys' sherry, and put some problem to him, knowing he could rely on an opinion free of prejudice. He did not invariably follow the advice given but he was always influenced by it. In the case of an appeal to expand he was gratified to discover Algy's views coincided exactly with his own.

'I have always thought,' the old man said, revolving sherry glass between forefinger and thumb, 'that that chap Danton was the most positive windbag to emerge from the French Revolution. What was it he said, when things were
at low ebb, and Brunswick and the emigres were after his scalp?'

' “The kings of Europe advance against us…!” ' David prompted, but Algy exclaimed, 'Don't tell me! I remember exactly. “…We throw at their feet, as gauge of battle, the head of a king!” Rather splendid, wasn't it? Reprehensible, of course, but what a gesture! What a pity his career was cut short by that frightful prig Robespierre.'

'I didn't get you here to philosophise on the French Revolution, Algy, but to confirm my opinion that this is a time to attack rather than run for cover. If you agree then I'd be delighted to hear you say so. It's all I need.'

'You don't need it at all, P.J., for I'm no more than your longstop now and well you know it. You ask me back here out of sentiment, but don't think I fail to appreciate it.'

'That's not true, Algy, but let it pass. I've discussed it with Howarth and Barnaby, and they both take a more cautious view. Howarth has been grousing about lack of classroom space for years, but now that our numbers have dropped, and we've got more elbow room, he counsels patience. As for Barnaby, he'll never make an important decision if he can avoid it. The Ancients have taught him to keep an open mind about everything. But you're different. In many ways you're still younger than any of us. All I really need to know is why you favour attacking instead of waiting for better times.'

'When you've been sitting in that hot seat as long as I sat in it,' Algy said, 'you'll learn that the time is never ripe for advance on any one front, let alone all of 'em. Someone will always be around to shout “Whoa!” to tell you to stay looking instead of leaping. If you pay the least heed to 'em you'll fossilise at fifty. See here, we look at the place now and what do we find? Numbers down, waiting-list shortening, head-wagging all round. Very well, but aren't they very sound reasons for a special effort, and the right sort of advertising? Education in the public sector is improving and expanding all the time. We've got to give a parent something extra to tempt him to invest in us. I've always believed that although, as far as the fabric is concerned, I'm the wrong chap to be lecturing you. Alcock did more for the buildings in four years than I did in twenty-four, but I was here at a time when fabric didn't count for much. That's all behind us now. Parents think their little darlings are entitled to as much comfort in term as they get in the holidays, at “Green Gables” and “Windy Nook". Can't have 'em warming their bottoms against the hot-water pipes, and giving themselves constipation, or finishing off Saturday's joint with shepherd's pie and bubble and squeak until Wednesday. They judge a school
on its fabric and its menus. Why, if that cold fish Alcock hadn't seen to those latrines you would have had the County Sanitary Inspector breathing down your neck by now. Just go right ahead with your improvements, and use every trick in the book to raise the wherewithal. Get the Governors to sanction a big overdraft if necessary and, talking of Governors, I'll let you into a secret. I'm taking Blunt's place on the Board at the start of summer term.'

It was excellent news and David greeted it with a schoolboy whoop. 'Going on the Board? But that's marvellous! And here I've been biting my nails and wondering who would replace that old blockhead.'

'Hush now,' Algy said, holding out his glass for a refill, 'the distinguished Alderman is hardly cold in his grave,' but David said, 'He was stone cold before he reached it. He blocked everything and in the end even Carter admitted we'd made a damned bad bargain enlisting him after the war. But with you in there, wheedling and cajoling…'

'Cajole I often do, but wheedle never. There's a difference, P.J. Always leave the options open on dignity. Well, now, to sum up, I take it you'll go for a gym, new science lab and three new classrooms. That demands a one-storey new wing, at right angles to Big School. The gymnasium? Simple matter of roofing over the space between present stables and fives court. Even I got as far as drawing up plans for that. But what about the concert hall?'

'Concert hall? Good Lord, suppose we could afford one, where would it go?'

'Cheapest way would be to make the new wing a two-storey block, with the hall on the ground floor and a flight of steps giving access to the labs and classrooms from the quad. Cost you half as much again, but you'd have a real focal point for entertainments. I won't tell you how sick I became of playing Gilbert and Sullivan to audiences soggy on the smell of boiled greens and pig-swill bins. And while you're at it you might as well give the kitchen a face-lift. Never did care to show mothers over
that
. Once had a big hotelier here who peeped in when I wasn't looking. We never saw him again. They tell me he kept all his sons at a secondary school until they were fifteen, then sent 'em to learn the trade in Switzerland.'

'But, hold on, Algy,' David protested, 'where the devil are we to find money for renovations on that scale? I set our target on a modest ten thousand.'

'Change it to twenty. Make a splash. We'll tap new sources that way. With Marie Stopes's contraceptive campaign catching on we can't rely on more than a hard core from the Old Boys in the future. When I started here the average
family was five. Now it's two and a bit. Money shortage isn't the only acid eating into the waiting-list.'

It was good to have such enthusiasm behind him and David launched his initial personal appeal at that year's Whitsuntide reunion.

It was a great occasion. So many familiar faces were there, ranged in rows in the library, and their presence assured him as to a general feeling of goodwill. At least a dozen covenants were forthcoming on the spot, a particularly generous one from the red-headed Letherett, one-time crony of Boyer in his wilder days, who had struck oil, so he said, in a large advertising business, inherited from an uncle who had died of drink. 'Took a fancy to me, Pow-Wow,' Letherett told him later. 'My family is very straitlaced, and dropped him when he took to lifting his elbow too much, and buying fur coats for his typists. But I went to work for him, and used to get him home and put him to bed, and pass the typists off as my private harem. He changed his will in my favour a week before he snuffed it. Said I was the only relative he had who wasn't a snivelling Puritan and therefore the only one who could hope to succeed in advertising, lair of the accomplished liar. Put me down for £100 a year over seven years.'

There were several equally refreshing encounters. The Gosse brothers, Archy and Starchy, were doing well in the paper-making business. David, accepting a covenant from Starchy, reminded him of the occasion when sitting on Algy's Mount Olympus, he had heard himself described as a Bolshie.

'You still are, according to whispers reaching me, Pow-Wow,' Starchy told him, 'but so what? This place needed a bit of fresh air after the war. Makes you think, doesn't it? I came here in 1916, when I was still wearing short pants, and look at me now. Not only shorter of wind, but pretty thin on top!'

Not all the re-encounters were breezy, however, and one in particular left him with a feeling that life was still very much a matter of pot-luck. After they had all gone, and plans were being drawn up for a rebuilding scheme, provisionally costed at sixteen thousand pounds, Boyer showed up, wan and a little threadbare, so that David did not have to ask how he was riding out the slump in the north. Over a beer in the living-room Chad confessed the real reason why he had not attended the annual reunion. 'It wouldn't do much for my morale to admit to chaps like Letherett that I couldn't stand a round at the bar, Pow-Wow. The fact is, I earn well under two hundred a year at a private school in the north. The head and his missis are very kind but the place has to be run on a shoe-string, with the general shortage of cash up there. It's no good advising me to look for
something better. I do, every time I nip around to the reading-room at the public library. It never struck me that jobs would be this hard to come by if I had a degree, but there are chaps with better degrees than mine who are on the skids. You need family money to tide you over something of this size and I never had any. Both my parents are dead and neither left me small change.'

'What's this place of yours like, exactly?' David enquired, remembering the original Boyer, chock-full of humour and boisterous high spirits. 'It seems to have got you down more than somewhat and it isn't just shortage of cash, is it?'

'No, it's the general atmosphere of the area – defeated and played out. I don't mind cities all that much but cities are places to work in and half the population seems to be on the dole. We've got a little Scots skivvy up there, pretty kid from the Highlands, mad keen to get an education. She sneaks up to my room whenever she can, not only for the obvious reasons but to cram. I don't see much of her, mind. Her working day is around fourteen hours. She gets her keep and about ten bob a week. Talk about sweated labour, but cases like that are common in all the industrial areas today.'

He glanced out of the window across the moor, now touched by the advance of spring. 'I was very happy up here, Pow-Wow. They really look like proving the happiest days of my life.' And then, with a touch of shyness that reminded David of the time he had called on him the night of Beth's funeral, with the gift of books to replace those lost in the trenches, 'I almost forgot the O.B. Appeal. It's only a token, of course, but Bouncer Acton was always fond of the widow's mite parable.'

The envelope contained a new pound note and he was far too moved to protest. The poignancy of the gift nudged his memory, so that he said, suddenly, 'Look here, Chad, how would you like to come back? To take my place as history master? We couldn't pay a lot but we could improve on what you're getting, and at least we'd put some Bamfylde beef on you. I can't guarantee, of course, as to how they might feel about taking an Old Boy on the staff, but I know Algy would approve. He was a kid here and came back as head. I've been looking about for someone I really fancy and if you'll give me a term, to sort things out…'

He stopped there, as moved as he had been by any incident over the last few years, for Boyer whipped out a handkerchief and gave his nose a long fog-horn blast, of the kind he had often used to infuriate Howarth in class. He said, 'It's possible? Working here under you, Pow-Wow?'

'The only thing I see against it is it might encourage other O.B.s down on their luck to apply, and that might cause embarrassment in some quarters. However, leave that to me, and I'll write you in time to give a term's notice. The time will come, I hope, when the Ministry of Education will have to do something drastic about some of these bloody little private schools dotted about the country.'

He was delighted to see the familiar grin split Boyer's face, who said, 'I may as well confess now. I wrote after a job at Carter's school last term, and would have landed it, if another O.B. hadn't jumped the queue. Needless to say, the chap who beat me to it was ex-Outram's.'

'I don't blame Carter for that. We say we don't show favouritism but we do, all of us, and why not? Your epileptic fit was my first introduction to Bamfylde.'