R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (79 page)

The ashtray, a large one, was full of butts. The air in the study was like that of a taproom. David crossed and opened a window on the forecourt. When he turned Howarth was crushing out yet another Gold Flake and heaving himself up. 'Give you another tip. Sleep on it before you put it to her and when you do have all the answers to her protests pat. Don't go off at half-cock again.' He looked at David humorously. 'You're inclined to do that, P.J. It's the Welshman in you, I imagine. Too damned impetuous, the Welsh! Good night to you.' He went out, closing the door softly. In all the years they had worked together David had never known him bang a door or make any noise that could be avoided.

1

S
O OFTEN IT HAD HAPPENED THAT WAY, A SUDDEN CLOSING IN of baleful factors that threatened to overwhelm him and then a single fissure that offered an escape route and, once exploited, presented a variety of alternative new courses. Within a day of his putting the proposal to her the means to achieve it without a great deal of fuss and improvisation came to hand in the form of a legacy, providing sufficient cash to expand Howarth's idea in a way that made it practical.

Until then he had not seen it as much more than a marginal involvement on the part of Chris, who could devote a couple of hours a day to the smaller, younger half of the swollen Second Form. But with the money, and the accommodation resulting from the new wing, he began to see the development as the founding of a bona fide preparatory department that could be expanded term by term, giving her all the scope she needed. He went about it with enthusiasm and when the builder's estimate for a junior dormitory was in hand he put the scheme to her in detail, expecting and getting some reservations on her part regarding her fitness for responsibility of the kind demanded.

'I don't know, Davy. You need special training for a job of that kind. I've had absolutely no experience with kids, or teaching of any kind, save that one term just after I left University. I don't think I could even keep order if it came to the point. Taking an odd class is one thing. Running a whole new department is quite another.'

'I'd back you and so would Howarth, Barnaby and Briggy. They think you'd be ideal for the job. Give it a try, anyway. For all our sakes.'

'Especially mine,' and she smiled, wryly. 'Well, that's the general idea, isn't it?'

'Up on the moor you wanted a role. Here's a real one and you'll get paid for it. Not all that much, for we can't afford it, but something.'

'Won't you have to put it to the Governors?'

'Ultimately, but I don't expect any trouble there. I've got two trump cards. That legacy and your degree. Well?'

'I'll give it a go, Davy. I'll try like hell.'

'That's all I want to hear.'

They soon had a nickname for it. The boys called it the Cradle and soon the term became general, even among the staff. The Cradle. Eight scruffy little first-termers and two more seasoned recruits, including John Churchill, the ten-year-old whose presence she had questioned at Ringwood on the last day of their honeymoon. From the first hour of the first day it was a resounding success so that within a week she came to accept the fact that she had a gift for teaching, an instinctive knowledge of how to estimate their potentialities, apply the spur to the embryo timewasters and nurture confidence in what Barnaby called 'the premature transplants'. Some of the enthusiasms of her own childhood and adolescence returned to her, so that she found herself rereading books and responding to them in a way she had all but forgotten. And at the same time she developed a fierce pride in obvious results, in seeing the timid take heart and the would-be jesters put firmly in their place. Young Churchill (whom she never ceased to regard as the rangefinder for the Cradle) took her fancy from the start, a sensitive, eager boy with a good memory, who had lost much of his initial shyness after a resounding success as Yum-Yum in last year's
Mikado
. The rest, for the most part, were a guileless, merryhearted lot and it was tremendous fun breaking them in, as Howarth put it, on
Poems of Action, The Water-Babies
and
Huckleberry Finn.
She liked her English classes best but they were quick to respond to elementary maths and the garishly illustrated
Le Livre Rouge
that she chose to give them their first lessons in French. Sometimes their high spirits were a little overwhelming.

'Please, miss, can we move on to the Sheperdson-Grangerford feud? I read it last night before lights out and it's spiffing…'

'Please, miss, what's the French for “it doesn't matter"? Ford says it's “Sanfairyann” but it isn't is it?'

'Miss, can I change places with Grisewood? He's a frowster and won't have the window open.'

They all called her 'Miss' and when she asked Davy about this he said to let it pass. 'Mrs Powlett-Jones' was too much of a mouthful and 'Ma'am' would make her feel like Queen Vic coming up to her Second Jubilee.

It was better therapy than any of them guessed and right through the tail-end of the summer term, the succeeding term and into the new year, she was aware of having got a grip on the situation, so that the memory of that humiliating surrender to what had seemed a conspiracy of events to wreck his life and hers receded into the subconscious. Both of them were happy to leave it there. It was a time of new experiences and a drastic reappraisal of her entire expectations up here on the plateau. But she realised he would be unlikely to see it as anything so dramatic. It was just one more tiresome problem solved, lost in the familiar pattern of humps, dips and level stretches of the school year although, every now and again, something occurred to make a period memorable in terms of Bamfylde history, Bamfylde lore, Bamfylde's ever-expanding gallery of oddities.

To her they were all oddities, but even by his standards there seemed to be a plague of them in 1935. Sometimes a new entry would yield a crop of faceless boys, who merged into the background like a stage chorus. At other times a clutch of singular personalities would emerge by the end of a full year. Nineteen-thirty-five was a vintage year.

Hookham, for instance. Thirteen when he arrived, and too old for the Cradle, he was sent instead to the Second Form, ruled by Miss Nixon, spinster daughter of Prebendary Nixon, and known by the boys as 'Bo', herself quite a character.

Venn, in the long line of Bamfylde's official jesters, invented the name within days of Miss Nixon's arrival, the nickname emerging painlessly from a discussion in the Upper Fifth on her somewhat overbearing presence. Almost as tall as Frobisher, the lankiest boy on the roll, she was also broadshouldered, bell-toothed and possessed of a furious energy that had her charges panting in her wake. Venn made a hobby of cataloguing staff idiosyncrasies and was currently regarded as Bamfylde's best mimic, so that idiosyncrasies were his stock in trade.

'The kind of woman one associates with the garrisons of beleaguered towns in the Indian Mutiny,' he drawled. 'True daughter of the regiment, don't you know? I see her as the unmarried elder sister of that nifty little brunette in the
picture in Big School, “The Relief of Arcot”, where the nifty one is drawing attention to the approach of the pipes. However, seeing that even she could have landed a sex-starved subaltern in India, I think of Miss Nixon as someone more regal. How about a warrior queen, driving one of those chariots fitted with revolving meat slicers?'

'Boadicea,' prompted Dodge, who was Venn's feed, and Venn said, 'Right! Scattering arms, legs and helmets in all directions!' and Miss Nixon had been safely christened.

It was to Bo Nixon that David went, in puzzled mood, one November day, with a grubby note written on graph paper, seeking more precise information concerning little Hookham, but he was obliged to pretend to an absorbed interest in the skyline when Miss Nixon declared his evidence the clumsiest forgery she had seen in twenty years in the profession!

'Oh, I wouldn't say that,' said David, gently pulling her leg, 'I've seen worse, and you have to admit it's highly original. Let me read it again,' and he took the note and read its contents aloud, savouring every laborious downstroke;

Dere Headmaster,

Please send Hookham home at wunce. I need him here.

This is urjent.

(Signed) Mrs Hookham

And below, the inevitable postscript,

Put the tranefare on the bill. L.H.

'You don't regard it as anything but an insolent joke. I hope, Headmaster? I know just how I should deal with it. Its perpetrator wouldn't sit comfortably for a week,' but she added, as though not yet absolutely sure of her ground with an officer newly risen from the ranks, 'Naturally, it's not my province to advise. It was addressed through the post to you.'

'That's so,' David said, 'but to be frank I don't recall Hookham, save as a scared little beggar without a word to say for himself, and that's why I'm here, to get information. You've had him several weeks now, although I do seem to recall he arrived a week or so late.'

Miss Nixon glanced at her register. 'On October 1st. I'll tell him to report to you at once, Headmaster,' and looked quite baffled when David said, hastily, 'No, Miss Nixon! I don't want him reporting to me. That'll scare the living
daylights out of him, and if he has any sense – and I'd say he had a good deal – he'll simply deny all knowledge of it.'

'How could he do that? It's in his handwriting, if you call it handwriting.'

'Well, that's one to us, but what's he like? To teach and handle?'

She said, knitting her brow, 'You can judge his work standard from that ridiculous letter. As to handling him, there's no pertness or impudence as I recall. He's just a sack at the back of the class. As a matter of fact…' but she stopped, looking a little baffled.

'Well?'

'I was only going to add that, if it hadn't been Hookham's handwriting, I would have looked elsewhere for the authorship. A joke played on you and him by one of the others, possibly someone in the Third or Fourth.'

'Thank you, Miss Nixon. You've been very helpful,' and he sauntered away, with an uncomfortable impression that he had made an unwise choice as regards the Prebendary's daughter. Although undeniably a character, she was entirely without humour and therefore not the best Bamfylde material.

He was surprised when Chris affirmed that Miss Nixon was the right person in the right place at the right time.

'Is that based on what the women's magazines call feminine intuition?'

'I don't have intuitions here. I learned to discard them after a week. When I give you advice about anyone in this crazy place it's based on logic. I seem to be the only one capable of applying any up here.'

'You're saying Bo Nixon is the right person to cope with thirteen-year-olds ?'

'She fulfils a necessary function just now. Think back a bit. Before you set up the Cradle all the beginners looked for their mothering in the Second Form, right?'

'Right. Ma Fender, Mrs Parminter that is, was said to press them to her bosom, and Mrs Arscott was pretty soft with them.'

'Well, now we've got some kind of prep department they arrive in the Second fully fledged, so they can do with a dose of Miss Nixon. But what's behind all this?'

He showed her the note, expecting her to laugh but she didn't. She said, seriously, 'This poor little wretch is clearly an exception. He must have been desperate to go to these lengths. Has anything like this ever happened before?'

'Not to my recollection. I told Miss Nixon this took the Bamfylde biscuit for originality.'

'Then do Hookham a favour. Let me deal with it.'

'You really think that the kid is going to the wall? I mean, Miss Nixon's right in a way. We could regard it as an elaborate legpull.'

'It isn't a legpull and could lead to a lot of unpleasantness.' Without waiting for his assent she took the note and marched out, leaving him almost as baffled as Bo Nixon, but then, thinking it over, he remembered the rare tact she had shown in Bradshawe's case, and it occurred to him that she was already overhauling him at a breathtaking rate, overhauling them all, in fact. Hookham, he decided, was in safe hands.