R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (82 page)

All the local farmers, even those who had attended Bamfylde as day-boys, referred to school as 'downalong', just as they qualified for the majestic title of 'Man' when they became farmers in their own right. David confirmed that
things were indeed looking up, that they now had more than three hundred and fifty on the roll, and a waiting-list of a hundred and seventeen. 'Well,' Dixon said, unsentimentally, 'that'll be your doing, Pow-Wow. We never did take to that foreigner they brought in,' and at that point three rearguard whippers-in came over the crest, Venn, Coxe and the local boy, Davidson, loping abreast and in no particular hurry, for they were all First Fifteen rugby colours and lukewarm concerning other sporting activities.

Then, plunging up the reverse slope, and sobbing for breath, Meadowes appeared, gasping out his news, and David's first impulse was to dash off down the steep slope but Dixon grabbed him, shouting, 'Wait on! It's all but a mile. The youngsters'll make it in half the time. Wait, 'till I fetch tackle… had a heifer in that mire only last week…!' and he went off at a heavy run to his outbuildings farther along the crest, and David turned to speed the seniors on their way but they were already a hundred yards down the slope, heading for the spot indicated by Meadowes's stabbing finger.

He said, making a tremendous effort to control himself, 'How bad is it, Meadowes? How deep is he in?' and Meadowes, as blown as he had ever seen a boy, wheezed, 'Deep, sir… Up to his waist' and was sick, bowing his head and sagging at the knees.

For a man weighing fourteen stone, Dixon was very quick on his feet. Almost at once he reappeared, pounding along the crest carrying a coil of rope and what looked like a leather harness. 'Leave the kid here,' he shouted, without checking his stride, 'but look where you're going – bog patches right along that bottom,' and went ponderously down the great, angled slope, and through a belt of brushwood that brought them to the river north of the ford.

He thought, as he ran, 'Dear God, don't let it happen. Not
now,
not
this
way! A kid of thirteen, drowned in a bog… it'll be the end of everything…' and then he remembered that Coxe and Davidson would be there by now, and that both were tough and resolute, although he wasn't so sure about the jester, Venn.

They came on the group suddenly, at a spot where the cattle had churned the floor of the valley into a sticky gluelike porridge, not unlike the crater-landscape of Passchendaele. They were still holding on, and his instinct for authority, trimmed and tested over the years, reasserted itself as he took in the situation at a glance. Coxe called, from the far side of the fence, 'Throw us the rope over, sir! Davidson's got a good hold on the fence…!' and Man Dixon grunted, 'Tiz harness, boy… Get it under his armpits somehow,' but by then
David was across the fence and crawling along to the point where Davidson was still lying prone, with the unrecognisable Driscoe clinging to his shins, both of them half-enmeshed in what looked like a coil of rusty wire.

They were only just in time. Despite Coxe's efforts, his success in reaching Driscoe's left arm, and his tremendous efforts to drag him closer to the palings, the boy was weakening and his fingers were slipping the length of Davidson's legs. He had also lost his end of the wire and with it the feeble anchorage it had provided. By wading in beyond his knees, however, David got a firm grip on Driscoe's right arm and his presence enabled Coxe to enlarge his hold on the left, so that between them they managed somehow to slip the leather harness over his shoulders. Floundering there, dragged forward into the mire, the task proved fiendishly difficult and even when it was accomplished they had no room to pay it out so that Driscoe could be dragged clear by sheer weight of muscle. But then, as though he had materialised out of the slime, another mud-spattered Junior appeared and David recognised Gosse, who piped,
'Leave it,
sir! Hold him, and I'll take it…!' and somehow he did, without rising upright, and the rope tightened almost at once as Venn began to haul.

They came clear in a flurry of mud, Coxe, Gosse, himself and Driscoe, whose legs, plucked from the slough, made a sound like a cork being drawn from a bottle. Even then, with Davidson lying prone between bog and palings, they would have got no farther forward had not Venn shown initiative by ripping away the bottom section of the barrier so that they could scramble through en masse, a jumble of arms, legs, wire, rope and splintered fencing.

Man Dixon took charge of them at that stage, lifting Driscoe in his arms and trudging back along the river to the point where a gravelled path climbed to his yard. The rest followed at a distance, with Davidson, the last to emerge, spluttering and coughing in the rear.

It was with a sense of wonder that he heard Driscoe speak, sitting with his head between his knees on Dixon's bagged-out sofa in the big farm kitchen… 'Lost my glasses… went off the path…' but then he too was sick, obligingly on Dixon's hearthstones, clear of the sheepskin rug spread there. One of Dixon's Welsh collies drifted in, sniffing curiously at the vomit and Dixon, cuffing the dog, called over his shoulder, 'Fetch a cloth an' bucket, Mother, and clean him up. We could all do with a wash, I reckon.'

He remembered little of the shuffle home, with Driscoe carried pick-a-back by Coxe, and little Gosse, who had lost both shoes, picking his way fastidiously over the stretch of flint road beyond Stone Cross. Venn told him how they had managed until he and Dixon had arrived but it was not until later, when they had all had a shower, and Driscoe had been dosed and put to bed in the sanatorium, that he remembered to send for Coxe, senior of the trio, and get a detailed story.

Coxe said, 'I did what I could, sir, but it wasn't much. Davidson took the brunt of it. I had to wedge one of those planks under his legs and it took the skin off his knees. There were old nails sticking in it. I think matron's bandaging him right now.'

David said, 'Go up and wait for him, Frankie. Then come down again, with Venn. You can skip prep, all three of you. And send someone else for those infants, Gosse was one… who was the other?'

'Meadowes, sir. Gosse was the one who saw him first. He's a plucky kid, and had his wits about him. He threw Driscoe the wire, but that was before we got there. He would have gone under but for that. I'll find Davidson, sir,' and he left.

He sat at the desk stirring his tea, a desk occupied by a succession of Bamfylde headmasters, all of them, including Alcock, now gazing down at heedless newcomers in the Rogues' Gallery in Remove passage. He felt drained, used up and disconsolate, thinking, 'My God, but it was a near thing. We should have been finished if it hadn't been for that bunch and that's a fact. I'd best write to Mrs Driscoe tonight, for the kid will, as soon as he perks up,' and then, following a perfunctory rap on the door, Miss Nixon appeared, holding an envelope that she laid on the desk. 'Driscoe's glasses, Headmaster. He seemed anxious about them and Parker went out to look for them with a flashlight. They aren't broken, and I've cleaned them as best I can.'

'Thank you, Miss Nixon,' he said, absently, 'and thank Parker for me, will you? Driscoe will be all right after a good sleep, or so matron says. He was sick and got the filthy stuff off his chest minutes after we pulled him out.'

She withdrew quietly, disapprovingly he suspected, and he let his tea go cold. Presently there was a more subdued knock and all five of them sidled in, Davidson walking stiffly under his bandages, then Coxe, then Venn, miraculously transformed after his tussle with the mud, and finally the two Second Formers, Gosse and Meadowes. He said, 'Find a seat somewhere. Nothing official,' and they disposed themselves, only the dandy Venn at ease.

'That was a terrific show,' he said, 'and I wanted to thank you all in private before I do it in public. I imagine Mrs Driscoe will write to you later. I'm not making any bones about what happened down there. But for you chaps Driscoe would be dead. And buried. You all appreciate that, I suppose?'

They said nothing and each of them studiously avoided his eye. 'It's odd,' he thought, 'it's always so damned difficult to find the right words to compliment the English,' but he went on, 'I'll write an account of it exactly as it happened, and print it in this term's register. All I really wanted to say, beyond that, is don't play it down for fear of putting on side. I've a reason for saying that. I'd like to think we've all learned something about playing fast and loose with the moor in winter.'

Gosse piped up then, so unexpectedly that Meadowes hic coughed with embarrassment. 'It wasn't Driscoe's fault, sir. He's as blind as a bat without his specs.'

'I daresay. So the moral seems to be, no specs no movement. And that goes for anyone overtaken by dusk on any of the runs. Stay put and holler. Good night, and thanks again.'

They got up and filed out but he sat on brooding. Presently Chris came in, carrying the whisky decanter and soda siphon.

'You need a drink, Davy.'

'I need a bottle,' he said. 'Neat. I've just had them all in and thanked them. You've heard the full story I imagine?'

'Matron told me. You put up a pretty good show yourself, Davy.'

'I didn't,' he said grimly, 'and I've been sitting here coming to terms with the fact that I'm slowing down. If it had been left to me, or even to me and Dickie Dixon, that poor kid would be as dead as Carver Doone. All we did was to speed it up a bit. They'd have coped.'

'You're forty plus,' she said. 'Most men your age wouldn't have gone on the run at all, so don't sit there blaming yourself for an unforeseeable accident.'

'It wasn't unforeseeable. Or shouldn't have been. I've been over that Middlemoor course every year since December, 1918, and I knew there were patches of dangerous bog in that river bottom. I should have talked Dixon into fencing all the level ground and putting up a damned great notice.'

'Most boys will climb fences, and all boys will ignore notices. Besides, you appear to have forgotten something.'

'What?'

'Your indirect contribution.'

'Come again?'

'Those five boys. Just tell me something, how long is their aggregate stay here?'

He began to discern her line of reasoning. 'I could work it out. Venn is just entering his fifth year. Coxe and Davidson are old stagers. They were here one term with the Stoic. The two Cradlers can only sport a year between them, they both arrived last spring. That's a total of sixteen years, give or take a term or two.'

'During which time they've all been taught and trained by you.'

'Me among others.'

'No, Davy. Not as regards what they did this afternoon. That's your doing.'

She got up, removed the tea tray and set the drink in its place but then, noting his frown, took his face between her palms and kissed his mouth in that assertive way of hers. 'It's true,' she said, 'think about it. They all seem to me to qualify as handkerchief donors, and that's your doing. Not one of them was here when Algy Herries told that story.'

His arm slipped round her. At times like this, when he was feeling vulnerable, he was immensely grateful for her and as always, when aware of a need of her, his senses stirred, demanding close physical contact. He said, 'By God, I was lucky to talk you into coming here, and even more right to persevere when you wanted to pack it in. I couldn't cope alone any more.'

'You've had to most of the time. Let's make an early night of it. Leave all that bumf on your desk. I'll get supper now and when it's lights out for them it'll be lights out for us.'

'That's two hours or more. I'm not sure I can wait that long.'

'You'll have to,' she said, 'for I'm hanged if I want last minute interruptions by the duty prefect. It's happened more than once.'

She switched off the desk lamp and they went through into the parlour where a bright log fire burned in the everlasting down-draught. Supper was laid. It looked very cosy in here. His overall grasp of the job returned to him a little soggily but definitely, like Driscoe emerging from the bog, and with it a buoyancy that stemmed, he supposed, from a sense of reprieve. He said, taking in the trim lines of her figure as she stooped to throw another log on the fire, 'I wish it was holiday time. I wouldn't bother with supper or bed,' but she was equal to him.

'There's always old Rigby, and even if he's asleep beside the kitchen stove, there are the Sunsetters. We haven't that much dignity to squander, sir.'

1

I
N HIS RELAXED MOODS HE COULD STILL THINK OF HIMSELF AS ruling an island in a stream, protected to some extent, from lethal flotsam that coasted by on either side, touching shore here and there, probing, fussing, worrying, but finally moving on round the bend in the river. But latterly lodgments were made, and unexpected pressures exerted, so that a certain amount of erosion was evident, fissures showing in his defences. Whenever this happened he was troubled, for they always appeared at places where he thought himself buttressed against adversity. Such a case was Christopherson's in the spring of '37.

There had been a time when Bamfylde's remoteness made nonsense of faraway commotions but latterly, as the decade sped along, there had been dramatic improvements in communications. In the early 'twenties their newspapers had arrived almost a day late, while only the odd crackpot thought of wireless as anything more than an amusing toy. Today newspapers were delivered in bulk, and were distributed to classrooms before first period bell. There were also half a dozen wireless sets on the premises, some of them complicated-looking pieces of apparatus, and their stream of bulletins kept everyone informed of what was happening elsewhere. It made a difference, as his encounter with Christopherson II proved.