R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (74 page)

'And after that?'

'I had him watched by the seediest little private detective you ever read about, if you read that kind of fiction. His work was a lot better than his appearance. He came up with cast-iron evidence in ten days and all I had to do then was threaten. Rowley holds an important position out there, and the Scots Presbyterian influence is strong in his university. He had no alternative but to cave in and supply evidence for a divorce over here. The decree absolute comes through on August 1st. There's no prospect of complications, or not unless he's been watching us with a telescope this afternoon and that I doubt. He never was one for country delights.'

It did not seem more than a defensive statement on her part but he knew she would not view it that way. She would be more likely to regard it as moral blackmail, and at the time it had probably disgusted her. He said, 'You can't expect me to feel sorry for him. Plenty of women would have taken him for a lot more than a straight divorce, and you never spent a penny of his money on yourself. Put it out of mind. Look on it as a case of tit for tat.' Then, with some difficulty, 'In the preliminary skirmishes, didn't you feel anything of the very strong affection you once had for him?'

'Simply as a man? Yes, I did. You were a long way off, and I never did kid myself that celibacy is my strong suit. In that sense it was lucky it was Rowley, and not some other redblooded male. But what came over to me again, this time in added measure, was his absolute bloody selfishness. Rowley is more than ordinarily selfish, anyway, but measured against someone like you he isn't much more than an animal. At least, that's how it seemed to me. I like to be wanted as a person, not as an instrument. That's important to me, Davy.'

'It's important to most women, so don't be too generous with the haloes. If it wasn't I would have said to hell with it and gone off on the rampage now and again, and I daresay you'll discover I can run Rowley pretty close for selfishness sometimes. At least, as far as my job's concerned. Are you absolutely sure you want to take me on? A husband pushing forty is one thing. Motherhood to a horde of growing boys is another.'

'I'll cope, somehow. Providing you've got more patience in reserve. In any case, it's you who are taking the risk, Davy. Maybe you should take time off to think about it.'

'I've had all the time I need. Meantime I'm starving so why don't we celebrate? Do you think we could get a dinner at that place where we left the car?'

'If we can find our way back to it before dark.'

He pulled her up and they went back up the long, winding path to the saddle of the two rock-strewn hills they had crossed an hour ago. In that brief interval or so it seemed to him, they had found a row of signposts pointing the way into a new era.

3

Not since the long, hot summer of 1919 had a term passed in such a succession of fleeting, sunlit days. His mood, in the span between early May and late July, was at one with the period just prior to his earlier marriage. There had been other smoothly running terms but always, at one or another stage of them, something sour or explosive had occurred, a flare-up with Carter, a confrontation with Alcock or even a let-down reminding him yet again that it was all too easy to grow too complacent about one's ability to judge character. But this term, with Bamfylde under his hand, it was all plain sailing and even the highlights were amusing.

There was Hislop's momentary reversion to his original form, when he hit a spectacular six that soared over the western boundary, ricocheted from the bonnet of a Governor's Daimler, and plopped through the open window of an adjoining car, where old Bouncer, back on a visit, was enjoying an afternoon nap. A dozen witnesses stepped forward to swear that Bouncer, leaping from his car, threatened the batsman with his statutory four penal marks for an act of lese-majestie.

There was the sudden appearance of Molyneux's outlandish Australian uncle, who looked exactly like a Colonial gent masquerading as Bernard Shaw, a man so unfamiliar with the taboos of English schools as to appear in the Upper Fifth one morning and address Molyneux by his carefully concealed Christian name, Aloysius, a gaffe that stunned the French master and bid fair to undermine his class discipline for all time. And soon after that there was the overnight visit of Sax Hoskins and his Rhythmateers, touring the West Country resorts, who descended on Bamfylde one Sunday afternoon and gave what Sax called a 'Bamfylde Benefit Session', an honour bestowed upon them in Grace's honour.

Sax had always been popular. Unquenchable high spirits, a rumbustious sense of humour and, above all, an uncanny mastery of many so-called musical instruments, dating from his Second Form variations of 'Alexander's Ragtime
Band' on a mouth organ, had won him an enduring place in Bamfylde legend. His reappearance, at the head of a professional dance orchestra was a triumph and he played for two hours by Big Hall clock, the only man among his sweating Rhythmateers impervious to the heat, recorded as reaching the high eighties that night.

David had anticipated some difficulty with Grace concerning the prospect of a stepmother. Not much, perhaps, for she had always been an exceptionally biddable child, but their relationship was close and it would not have been surprising if she had viewed Christine with a certain amount of resentment. He told her of his plans the night he returned from Manchester, and was relieved when she took it calmly. Not as a matter of course, exactly, but more like an intelligent adult than an adolescent. She said, after he had outlined the history of his long, frustrating friendship with Christine, 'Poor old Daddy! It sounds frightfully complicated. I knew you were keen on her, of course, and one time, two years ago it was, I made sure you'd marry her and was scared, even though she seemed nice that time she came here. But then, when you stopped talking about her, I made up my mind you'd stay single, especially now you're head.'

'I'd come to the same conclusion myself,' he said. 'This came out of the blue. I didn't even know there was any hope for her getting a divorce, and even if there was there was always her determination to get into Parliament. She would, too, if she kept at it. She's that kind of person.'

'Won't she ever try again?'

'I don't know. That'll be up to her.'

'And what do you think about that?'

He was fortunate, he reflected, to be able to discuss the situation so frankly with a fourteen-year-old. Her objectivity had to do with her long isolation here among so many thrustful males, he supposed. Their resilience, their tendency to treat every new day as a fresh start, had rubbed off on her over the years. He said, 'She might try for local candidature, and I wouldn't stop her. This is Tory and Liberal country, and Labour are keen to get a foot in the door. I imagine it all depends on how she settles in here. She hasn't much confidence in herself as a headmaster's wife. It'll be up to you and me to try and give her some.'

'You once had an idea of training me for the job, didn't you?'

'Yes, and in a way I still have. You could help a lot, Tuppence. The commercial courses start in September, when the builders' men move out, and
after school-leaving certificate you can take typing and shorthand. Then you can take Miss Rowlandson's place when she retires as secretary. Would that appeal to you?'

She told him it would and that she wanted, in addition to improve her French and learn German. Her French was already good and she seemed to have a flair for languages. 'Oughtn't I to meet her again soon?' she added, 'I mean,
before
you get married? We shall have to have a good chin-wag about you,' and he laughed, telling her that this was obligatory, if only to warn Chris of his likes and dislikes.

The meeting, when it came on Sports Day, was an unqualified success, adapting to the amiable pattern of the term. He had not realised how much he must have talked to Chris about Grace, or how observant Chris was when it came to assessing people. It was fun to watch Grace showing her round and familiarising her with every odd corner of the place, as though Chris had been a conscientious mother, hoping to send her son here in the autumn. And afterwards they gave him the slip and set out on a walk across Middlemoor, returning dusty and hungry, having achieved some kind of conspiratorial affinity while removed from the world of men and boys. It was only later, shortly before Chris set off north to pay a duty visit to her family in Yorkshire, that she indicated the level of intimacy they had achieved.

'She's an extraordinary little body, Davy. I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like her. Or not anyone under forty. Beth must have been a singular person. I mean, I'd expect any child of yours to be bright, and fairly easy to get along with, but she's more than that. She's… well… a born go-between. Now I'd say that's rare in a person her age. The really satisfying thing, however, is that she seems to have made up her mind that I'm the best of a bad job.'

It was characteristic of her, he thought, to put it like that and he said, laughing, 'Don't give me or Beth special credit for Grace. The boys have done that for her. I've always thought of Grace as a woman, even when she was six.'

She had left her car up north for an overhaul, so he saw her off at yet another railway station, a familiar one this time, so that the parting was less urgent. When she had gone he walked home along a road cordoned by summer foliage, and rich with the scent of honeysuckle. At the playing field gate he paused, listening to the distant
snack
of the ball at the nets and the odd isolated shout that carried all this way in the evening lull, acknowledging both sounds as part of Bamfylde's summer pattern and welcome on that account.

Standing there, looking over his shoulder at the stark outline of the buildings
silhouetted against a lemon, coral-streaked sky, he found it difficult to think of himself as a bridegroom-in-waiting, on a par with the callow young man who had passed this way on summer evenings in 1919. So difficult, indeed, that he could chuckle at the prospect, thinking, 'It's impossible to think of oneself as young in this job… almost everyone around is so much younger… easier to see oneself as an up-and-coming Judy Cordwainer… I'm thirty-seven, sound of wind and limb, certainly in the right job, but there have been times over the past few years when I've felt as old as Jehovah in one of His Why-don't-I-give-it-all-up moods…?' And then, unaccountably, he suddenly recalled that ridiculous incident in the train on their honeymoon trip to the Isle of Wight, when Beth had been so embarrassed by the onset of a period and he laughed, standing there by himself, for a thing like that wouldn't be likely to bother many couples nowadays.

As always, his reverie was terminated by the bell, ringing out over the plateau as Norman Minor, seventh in a long and distinguished line of bell-ringers he recalled, made his ritual circuit of the buildings, calling boys to prep like monks to prayer. He never had got round to replacing the handbell with a fixed one and now that he came to think about it he decided it could wait. The longer he stayed here the less he was inclined to disturb the old routine, even though, in a matter of thirty months, he had introduced a variety of new ones. It was a hangover of Algy's philosophy, he supposed – 'Concentrate on essentials, expand all you like, but don't pull up anything by the roots before making absolutely certain it's dead.'

He extinguished his cigarette carefully, for there were fire hazards in this kind of weather, then went along under a forest of six-foot cow-parsley stalks to the cloverleaf exit of the east drive. By the time he reached the forecourt the prep hush was on the school and he welcomed it. Four weeks wasn't long, for all the jobs he had in hand.

PLENITUDE

1

Y
EARS LATER, WHEN TWENTY-THREE NEW NAMES HAD BEEN added to the memorial outside, when he could look back on the period between his second marriage and the weeks preceding the summer of Dunkirk, he thought of the interval as his time of plenitude, strangely at odds with everything that was piling up outside. That, however, was an ultimate verdict, after he and Chris had met and survived a crisis that was new to him but morbidly familiar to her. So that, whereas he viewed it as no more than another sizeable hump in the rhythm of the years, she saw it as something infinitely more threatening and hazardous than he would have admitted at the time, shrugging it off as her playing-in period, the equivalent of a sensitive new boy's first school year.

It was at one with much that was happening in the world outside, where there seemed no prospect of harmony, where trouble flared in one capital or another, and her worst fears of the early 'thirties were justified, but her own inward struggle had no link with world turbulence, or the looming threat of war. It was a deeply personal challenge, fought without benefit of his armour, his sense of dedication, and there were times, many times, when she envied him his anchorage here in this small, close-knit community. His roots were well down and manifold. Hers, such as they were throughout that testing time, were pitifully shallow, save only the one, strong fibre of her love for him and what this place seemed to have made of him over the years.