R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (67 page)

It was interesting, David reflected, how all the old hands here borrowed from Algy's repertoire. Algy declared that he made his spot decisions according to the dictates of his 'little man', an inspired agent residing just below the navel and David recalled him consulting this infallible informant when they had been faced with Winterbourne's disappearance. He said, 'Very well, Barnaby, I'll go along with Algy's little man. After all, you're his housemaster, and what you say about the ragging makes sense to me. But I'd better see the boy, hadn't I?'

'Rather you didn't,' Barnaby said, 'He might be encouraged to elaborate to a point where we should be obliged to investigate. Besides, between you and me I've a grudging respect for Briggs, dating from the day I caught him smoking, and he excused himself on the grounds that they were asthmatical cigarettes, recommended to him by his father. They were, too, for I checked on that. They smelled like incense when I burned the packet. Wouldn't surprise me if Briggs didn't go into Fleet Street when he leaves here. First-class recruit for somebody like Rothermere or Beaverbrook, for whenever there's no hard news he invents some.'

They left it at that, and it was years later when, propping up a bar at an Old Boys' annual dinner in London, an adult Lackaknacker told him the truth, amid shouts of laughter from former cronies. Finding no cover on the open road when he emerged form the orchard, he had dived into the back of Chilcott's Morris and crouched there, undiscovered, while Chilcott drove into Norton Dip and parked outside the Woolsack. He had then made his way in approximately the way described. Briggs, as it happened, did not gravitate to Fleet Street but he did the next best thing, becoming a Public Relations officer for a big concern selling detergents. 'A post calculated to give the utmost scope to his undoubted powers of imagination,' commented Barnaby, when the story was relayed to him.

The Crispin story was equally sensational but had some alarming undertones. Crispin, a Sunsetter, and no relation to Howarth's Amy, was an exceptionally shy boy, who never seemed to make any friends but was tolerated as a hanger-on by
other coteries all the way up to the Lower Fourth. Sensitive, withdrawn and intelligent, he arrived in Middle School before he was fourteen, but then, one bitterly cold day in early December, his frail roof fell on him in the form of a charge of shoplifting in the village shop.

Old Mark Trescott appeared with the felon in tow towards tea-bell, presenting evidence of the theft, one bar of Mackintosh's toffee, value twopence, and the shopkeeper was threatening to prosecute. 'Tidden offen I ketch one red-'anded, as I did this jackdaw,' he told David, while Crispin stood staring down at the carpet, and when David begged him not to go to these lengths over a bar of toffee, he growled, 'Ah, tiz easy for you to talk, Headmaster, you don't have to make a livin' up there. Tuppence iz tuppence in my book.'

David had been at Bamfylde long enough to know the real source of Trescott's resentment. Until the new tuckshop had opened in 1924, his confectionery counter had been one of his main sources of income, but latterly his takings had dwindled. Here was a splendid opportunity to drive what he would see as a straightforward peasant bargain. 'I'll teel 'ee what,' he went on, a shade too eagerly, 'I won't press charges if you drop the hint to the bursar's missus to give over stockin' Mackintosh's. I don't want to zeem 'ardfaced, but toffee was my best line bevore she took it on.'

'You really think I could persuade her to do that, Trescott?'

'Why not? Youm the Ade up yer, bain 'ee?'

'Well,' David said, eyeing Crispin, 'let me propose a slightly different bargain. I won't report you to the police at Challacombe for trying to blackmail me, providing you accept the price of the goods here and now. How's that?'

Crispin looked up quickly, perhaps not wanting to miss Trescott's outraged expression as he roared, 'Tiz bluffan' you know it! I got a witness to 'im pinching that toffee but you abben got one to this bit of a tork we'm 'aving.'

'Indeed I have. Crispin's a witness, aren't you, Crispin? And how do you know he didn't mean to pay, before you scared him half to death by pouncing on him? Good God, man – a twopenny bar of toffee – you'd be laughed out of court in three minutes. He's got a good character here and I'd say so.'

There was a silence. Out in the quad the tea-bell rang. It always seemed to, David thought, at moments of crisis. Finally Trescott said, 'You know and he knows, he 'ad no bliddy intention o' paying.' Then, 'You'll give 'im a damn good thrashing, I hope?'

'He'll get precisely what he deserves, Mr Trescott, and thank you for bringing the matter to my attention.'

With a long, resentful look at Crispin, Trescott withdrew, and David waited until he heard the door in Big School passage slam before saying, 'Why, Crispin? You don't get much pocket-money but twopence – it's absolutely ridiculous! You see that now, I suppose?' but Crispin resumed his study of the carpet.

'You've stolen small things before? From Trescott's, from the tuckshop, the lockers?'

That found its mark. His head came up. '
No,
sir.
Never!'

'Then there
must
be a reason, possibly a good one and I'd like to hear it. I've got to hear it, Crispin.'

He said, carefully, 'You wouldn't understand, sir.'

'I might.'

'Nobody would.'

'You leave that to me, Crispin. Sit down and think it over. We've got all evening if necessary, but you don't leave here until I know, understand?'

About a minute passed. 'I suppose it was because of Towers, sir.'

'Towers was with you? He suggested you took it?'

'Good Lord, no, sir!' He sounded even more outraged than Trescott. 'Towers wouldn't do a thing like that!'

'Then how does Towers come into it?'

'He doesn't, sir, he doesn't know a thing about it. I meant to give it to him, that's all.'

'Sit down, Crispin, and let's get this straight. You say Towers doesn't come into it, yet you admit stealing it for him? You hadn't the price of it on you?'

'Yes, I had, sir.'

'You had? Do you often give Towers things?'

'Every Wednesday.'

'Why every Wednesday?'

'Wednesday's pocket-money day, sir.'

'Towers is a close friend of yours?'

'No, sir.'

'But you'd like him to be?'

He didn't answer this. Neither did he accept the invitation to sit down. David said, 'When you buy him things, how does he react?'

Crispin took his time. Finally he said, doggedly, 'He doesn't want me. He's got chaps like Coxe and Nesbitt. I bought him a pot of Mrs Redcliffe's baked beans last Wednesday but he sent it back.'

It was one of the most complex cases he had ever handled and he thought
longingly of Algy's vast store of experience. There was little to go on here save instinct, but instinct told him to tread with excessive caution.

'Listen, Crispin. I'm guessing and you aren't helping very much. Whatever's said here won't get around, it'll be between you and me, understand? I don't intend punishing you, either. What I said to Trescott was said to get rid of him. You're in bad trouble, sure enough, but it's not on account of that bar of toffee. Your people are a long way off. India, isn't it?'

'Yes, sir.'

'When did you last see them?'

'I saw my mother last year, sir, just before she went out. I haven't seen my father in three years.'

'Well, then, meantime I'm your father. That's how it has to be with most Sunsetters. Not perfect, but a lot better than nothing. Now tell me if I've got this right. You want Towers to accept you on the same terms as he accepts Coxe and Nesbitt, but he won't, so you buy him things. But that isn't working, so you go to the village and steal a bar of toffee from Trescott's counter. Can I assume you had already spent all your pocket money on that jar of beans?'

'No, sir, the beans were only fourpence. I had twopence left over.'

'Then why the devil didn't you pay Trescott for the toffee?'

'Something Towers said, sir.'

'What did he say?'

'He said you don't buy friends with beans or cream horns. Me and Towers – well – it just wouldn't work, sir.'

'But after that you deliberately stole the toffee for him.'

Crispin's lip quivered and his teeth clamped over his lip. 'I'm sorry, Crispin, but if I'm to help I've got to know to understand. Maybe you find it difficult to explain, but try, boy, for God's sake, try!'

'It was
doing
something, sir.'

'Doing something? You mean,
proving
something?'

'In a way, sir.'

'To yourself or to Towers?'

'To both of us. If Trescott hadn't seen me I was going to tell Towers I'd pinched it.'

'But you told me Towers wouldn't do a thing like that himself. Wouldn't he be even more inclined to turn you down when he knew you were a thief?'

'Yes, but it wouldn't have mattered, would it? I mean, he'd have thought
about it, wouldn't he? You see… I can't
do
anything, sir. Towers knows it and everybody knows it. I'm no good at anything. I never have been.'

The terrible poignancy of it assailed him. On one side Towers, a popular boy, strutting round with any number of friends to choose from, a boy with a father owning a big sports business in the Midlands, who drove up here in an Alvis and took his son and his son's cronies out for the day. And on the other side of the wire, looking in, Crispin; friendless, rejected and aware, every minute of the day, of his own inadequacy. There was no ready solution. It would need, he would say, a good deal of sober reflection, a careful weighing of every factor. He said, 'Well, that's all for now, Crispin, and I'm glad you brought yourself to tell me. Go and have your tea and don't say anything about this to anyone, not even Towers. And don't worry about Trescott either. He won't do a thing, do you hear?'

'Yes, sir.'

He went out, dragging his feet, and through the window giving on the quad David watched him, noting that he did not go through the arch towards Big Hall but across the quad towards the one-storey buildings that comprised the tuck-house, armoury, stables and coke-hole. He thought, 'Let him mull it over tea-less if he wants to, he won't have an appetite to speak of,' and rang for Rigby to order tea in his study, wishing that it was Friday, when Grace would be home. It was a problem he might, conceivably, have discussed with her. A twelve-year-old might be likely to approach it with more detachment than an adult.

He was crossing the quad an hour later when he saw Manners, a Sixth Former, emerge from the northern arch at a run. Seeing David, he changed direction rapidly, doubled round the Founder's statue and rushed up, gasping, 'Better come, sir… that kid Crispin… down in the coke-hole, blue in the face…!' and spun round, rushing back through the arch with David at his heels.

They jumped the three steps into the coke-hole together. The low-powered naked bulb did not do much to light up the windowless interior but what light there was touched Crispin's right hand, flung out towards the squat boiler, as though to ward off the reek that filled the cellar. He was slumped on a coke-container and a glance showed him that Manners had cause for alarm. Crispin's face was purple, and his teeth were bared in a kind of snarl. David gathered him up and ran back up the steps where a long gust of the north-easterly wind caught them, strong enough to make him reel. He shouted, 'After me, Manners… into
the Third Form…' and ran past the entrance of Outram's, turning right at the foot of the slate steps that led up to what had once been Julia Darbyshire's quarters. The Third Form fire was dead and it was cold in here, with the sash cord of an open window rotating in the draught. He laid Crispin flat on the desk, tore away collar and tie, and began massaging his chest, throwing all his weight into the exercise as Manners said, distractedly, 'Is he… is he
dead,
sir? He's my fag. I was looking for him going to clout him… one of the kids said he'd seen him go into the coke-hole after tea…'

'He would have been dead in another ten minutes… get matron here… tell her one of the boys is sick but don't tell anyone else. Wait around until he's in sickbay and report back to me.'

'I'm taking prep, sir.'

'Find a stand-in.'

'Yes, sir.'

He ran off but before he had reached the far end of the room Crispin vomited, turning face downwards, gripping the edge of the desk and retching violently. David continued to work on his back. He knew little or nothing about artificial respiration, but applied his strength as common sense dictated and it appeared to work. Crispin, having emptied his stomach, drew several long, shuddering breaths and sat up as Ma Kruger sailed in demanding to know what had happened. He told her briefly that Crispin had gone into the coke-hole to warm himself and had been overcome by the fumes. 'That place is out of bounds from now on,' he said. 'It's a marvel something like this didn't happen long ago. Put him straight into sick bay. Is there anyone else there?'

'No, Headmaster. The last flu case went out yesterday. Can he walk?'

'I can walk,' Crispin said, thickly, and proved it by sliding off the desk and steadying himself on the nearest blackboard peg.

'You had a close shave, Crispin. He's had nothing to eat since lunch, Matron. Get him some soup, if he can keep it down, but get him to bed first.'

'I know my job,' said Mrs Gorman, tartly, and he remembered, too late, that Ma Kruger could be very touchy if her methods were called into question.