R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (76 page)

She found it, oddly enough, through Howarth, whom she had come to like and respect as a man at war with humbug. Howarth gave her her first tenuous foothold by privately seeking her advice on Bradshawe, yet another of those unfortunates pulled apart by divided loyalties after his parents (surely, in this instance, the world's prize idiots!) sent him a stream of letters explaining their individual views on the rights and the wrongs of their divorce.

Bradshawe, an intelligent fifteen-year-old, was making heavy weather of the issue, or so Howarth told her. From a cheerful extrovert of a few months ago, he had become morose and solitary, and his work, according to a consensus of opinion in the common room had gone to pot. 'Tell me, Mrs P.J., as an expensively educated woman, how would you tackle it from my stand-point? Those fools are imposing unnecessary stress on the boy. As his housemaster I feel I'm falling down on the job and that really rattles me.'

'What makes you think I'm qualified to advise someone who has been at the job as long as you,' she protested, but he growled, 'Oh, don't give me mock modesty! You're much nearer Bradshawe's age than I am and must have ideas, so let's have 'em! You can rely on me to throw 'em back at you if they're too academic.'

'Well,' she said, doubtfully, 'you could try writing to each parent, pointing out the damage their letters are doing.'

'I tried that at the beginning of term and all that happened was
I
got a blow-by-blow description of the fracas. Puerile nonsense it was, too – wretched woman can't even spell, and she finished her bleat with a split infinitive.'

She laughed, deciding that, in this kind of situation, Howarth could be funny. 'I'll tell you what might work,' he went on. 'I'll brief you on the case and you have a straight talk with the boy.'

'Good heavens, how could I do that?'

'The same way as I'll have to if you don't,' he said, 'and passing the buck to P.J. won't work either. Too magisterial. Not him, of course, but his mantle of office. No, I'm serious. You'd be doing me a favour and, after all, it's a job that comes within the province of a head's wife. Ellie Herries got landed with it often.'

She said, obstinately, 'I won't do it without Davy's approval,' and he said, with one of his rusty chuckles, 'Leave P.J. to me. Told him a good many home truths in his time. Ask him if you don't believe me.'

The upshot was that she made her debut as counsellor within forty-eight hours, trapping Bradshawe in her parlour when the treacherous Howarth sent
him over with a note, with strict instructions to wait for an answer. The note read,

Since you didn't see fit to invite me to the wedding I didn't buy you a wedding present. Here is a hot-plate for hot potatoes.

Respectfully,

Ian Howarth

Below was a postscript,

Fragile. Handle with care!

She had the greatest difficulty in keeping a straight face as she said, 'Er… do sit down, Bradshawe. I won't keep you a minute,' and watched him out of the corner of her eye as she went across to the bureau and wrote,

No hot-plate, thank you. I'm sitting on one, thanks to you,

and sealed it.

She said, as he rose, 'Hold on a minute, Bradshawe, we haven't met before, have we?' and he mumbled that they had not.

'I'm just making tea. Will you stay and have some?'

He looked at her suspiciously, she thought, but he could hardly refuse so he sat down again, stuffing the note in his pocket. She called through to Rigby, 'Make it tea for two, please, Rigby,' and then, deciding on the direct approach, 'I had a chat with Mr Howarth yesterday. He tells me you've had a wretched term so far. Would you care to talk about it, to someone right outside? It would be confidential. I wouldn't dream of passing it on to the headmaster or Mr Howarth, if you preferred not.' And when he said nothing, 'You see, I've had personal experience of this divorce muddle myself. Nobody has to tell me how awful it can be.'

He looked at her with a touch of wonder, a nice-looking boy, with serious grey eyes and a friendly mouth. Tall and well-made for his age and possessing, she would say, exceptionally good manners.

'Did Mr Howarth tell you he had written to my people, ma'am?'

'Yes. But it didn't help, did it?'

Rigby padded in with the tray, set it down and went out again. She turned her back on him to pour and he said, 'My mother keeps saying she put it off until I was old enough to understand. That if she had had her way they would have split up years ago. I… well, I don't really believe that. I mean, in a way it shifts the blame on me, doesn't it?'

'How does it?'

'Well, things must have been getting worse all the time. They quarrelled, of course, but everyone's people have a bust up now and again, don't they?'

'If they're human they do. What's your Christian name, Bradshawe?'

He looked surprised. 'Nick… Nicholas, ma'am.'

'Well, look here, Nick, it's time you faced up to something. As your mother implies, you're quite old enough. People drift apart for all kinds of reasons, but a divorce in the family isn't the end of the world. It used to be but it isn't now. I dare say more than a dozen boys here have parents who have got themselves divorced and married again, and nobody a penny the wiser. The thing is, everybody is an individual, and has his own life to lead. You can sometimes help but not all that much. Do your sympathies lie in one direction or the other?'

'Not really. I gather my father has been running around with his secretary but mother… well, in a way she asked for it. I mean, ever since I can remember she's filled the house with people, all kinds of people. Painters, writers and so on – drips most of them, and father was all for a quiet life.'

'I see. Are you an only child?'

'I've got a brother older than me. He was here several years ago. He's married now.'

'Have you discussed it with him?'

'He doesn't want to know. He says the governor is in his second childhood, and the mater isn't through her first yet, and all one can do is write 'em off. How can a chap do that? I mean, after all they are one's people.'

'It's not bad advice for all that. Providing it's done kindly. Would it be so very difficult?'

He looked confused and she realised she would have to be more explicit. 'Before this happened, did you get along with them? Both of them?'

'More or less. I didn't see much of the governor and, as I say, mother was always surrounded by long hairs. They left me pretty much to myself.'

'Then what is it that's upset you so much?'

He said, with a baffled frown, 'Well, it's being a sort of referee. I mean, a
chap doesn't want to know all the grisly details, does he? They've split up and that's that. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about it.'

'Do you answer their letters point by point?'

'I try to.'

'Well, here's my advice for what it's worth, Nick. Stop trying. Keep in touch, the way you used to, a letter every week to each of them but full of school gossip that they'll find frightfully boring. Don't comment on a thing they say, and if you see another appeal to the ref coming up throw that letter in the wastepaper basket without reading it. My guess is they'll soon leave you alone to get on with your own life. Does that make sense?'

Surprisingly, and rewardingly, he smiled. He had, she thought, a very wise smile for a lad of fifteen. 'Yes, it does. It makes a hell… a real lot of sense.' He stood up, carefully replacing his cup on the tray. 'I'd better get back with this note. Mr Howarth said he was waiting for it,' but he didn't go and finally went on, 'Er… was that note about me, ma'am?'

She said, with a smile, 'Yes, it was, Nick, As a matter of fact, Mr Howarth insisted I had a chat with you. He seemed to think I could do it better than he could, or the head could, but I'll tell you this. They're both very much on your side, and so am I after what you've told me. Will you give what I suggested a try for the rest of the term?'

'Yes, I will. And thank you, ma'am… I just had to spill it to someone. That's the trouble with a place like this… I mean… regarding things outside… a chap tends to go round in circles.'

He held out his hand and she shook it, thinking as he left, 'That's about right. That
is
the trouble with a place like this and not only for the Bradshawes.' She was aware, however, of having made her first real contribution and it gave her a lift until she reflected that she had only been able to make it by chance. Very few boys would have been as frank and explicit as Bradshawe about a personal problem. To run a place like this had seemed a more or less straightforward job from a distance, a matter of training and educating boys within a system of do's and don'ts, but it wasn't like that at all, not when you saw it from the inside. It was a task of fearful complexity, where it was so easy to lose one's way and flounder. All manner of unlooked for situations arose day by day and each demanded a personalised approach. In a way – and she grudged the admission – Davy was right. Education, of the kind outsiders associated with schools, was a relatively unimportant part of boarding-school life. The human side of it, the sheer effort needed to keep a place as unwieldy as this on a level keel, required
infinite imagination, endless patience and heaven knows what else besides. The case of Nick Bradshawe, for instance, was no more than the tip of one iceberg, and here she was, preening herself for having smoothed it off, so to speak. Yet people like Davy and Howarth and all the other old stagers were expected to do what she had done off the cuff and still get boys through the examinations the outside world demanded of them.

The Bradshawe incident did have a side-effect, and that despite the fact that she did not discuss it with him. It made her aware of the true breadth of the demands made upon conscientious schoolmasters like Davy or Howarth, but it also increased the sense of her own inadequacy, so that it was fortunate that, within a month or so, her thoughts were switched by the near-certainty of a pregnancy, a circumstance that somehow surprised her, so much so that she kept her own counsel about it until the helterskelter of the end of term was behind them and she had him more or less to herself.

The opportunity occurred on the night of the old year, a few hours after she had received confirmation from Doc Willoughby. They had both attended a Sunsetters' party and after that a mild celebration with Howarth, Barnaby, Boyer and Alison, and he dropped off to sleep at once while she lay awake, listening to the storm getting up over the moor and marshalling its forces for an onrush on the school. Presently it struck and a dislodged slate from the roof went crashing down into the forecourt, landing with a noise loud enough to wake him.

'What was that?'

'A slate. You'd best get someone to look at that roof before term begins.'

'Yes, I will,' he mumbled sleepily but she said, 'Don't go to sleep again, Davy. I saw Doc Willoughby this afternoon, while you were in town getting the party supplies.'

He was wide awake now and sat up, switching on the bedside light. 'You're okay? Nothing wrong?'

'Nothing to get worked up about. I'm pregnant,' and his reaction to the bald statement was so dramatic that it reminded her of situations she had seen in so many bad films and plays, and had dismissed as improbable until now.

'Good God! This is a hell of a time to tell me. In the middle of the night, when we've accounted for half a bottle apiece!'

'I wasn't sure myself until teatime, and I could hardly tell you in front of the
Sunsetters or a bachelor staff, could I?'

He laughed then and hugged her, holding her in a way that told her he was delighted but was attempting to play down his initial sense of shock.

'You're glad about it, aren't you?'

'Of course I am,' he said. 'Aren't you?'

'I'm not absolutely sure yet. Yes, I think so… but… '

'But what?'

'I would have liked a little more time to play myself in.'

He rubbed his eyes. 'Rubbish! You're doing fine…' but then, as an afterthought, 'This will put paid to any prospect of a candidature. Does that bother you?'

'No. I've put that out of mind, Davy.'

'You didn't have to. I told you…'

'I know you told me, but it wouldn't work. This will, maybe.'

'What do you mean, Chris?'

She kissed his cheek. 'Dear Davy. You're so bright in some ways and so dim in others. No, not dim exactly, but the tiniest bit prejudiced. That's Bamfylde's fault I suppose. You can't live and work in a place like this without taking it for granted that everyone else sees the place through your eyes.'

'What are you getting at?'

'That a child of my own will give me real purpose in your life. I really haven't got one yet, you know.'

He thought about this for a moment. She granted him that. He was always willing to take time to see someone else's view, a rare trait in schoolmasters in her experience. Finally he said, 'I went through a longish period of uncertainty when I came here, Chris. Several times, during those long-drawn-out rows with Carter and Alcock I almost threw in the towel, but I'm damned glad I didn't. It's even more difficult for you, I imagine, without a defined role, and I'm only absolutely sure of one thing. You'll find one, with your brain and guts. I'd back all I have on that.'