R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (93 page)

When he turned back Earnshaw was smiling. 'You didn't have to do that, Headmaster. I'm nervous right enough, but it's nothing to do with this,' and he raised his right hand to the scar. 'I would have been nervous in any case. An inferiority complex, they'd call it, I imagine. The fact is, I've only read about places like this. I'd never visited one, much less worked in one.'

'That puts us on a level footing. When I came here, straight from hospital in March, 1918, I thought of all schools like this as a cross between Eton and

Borstal. An upper-crust Borstal,' and he was relieved to see Earnshaw's smile widen, embracing the reluctant part of his face that a grafter, somewhere, probably thought of as the best of a bad job. It encouraged him to add, 'As a matter of fact, you've got the edge on me. Your application says you had a year's pupil teaching before the war. I'd never faced a class in my life.'

The news must have surprised Earnshaw for he blinked rapidly and began, 'But surely…' and then Rigby doddered in with the whisky and he subsided until the butler had gone and David was busy with the drinks. 'You're saying you worked for your degree
after
coming here?'

'Years after. They were so short of manpower in 1918 they had to put up with it. I got an external degree. Not a very brilliant one, either.'

'But Bamfylde is a big school. And quite well known, isn't it?'

'It's big, but it's always been second grade. Academically and socially, that is. Not in any other way.'

It served to banish the last trace of Earnshaw's nervousness. He said, 'That makes it a lot easier. I'd intended working for a degree anyway. There never was much chance of a varsity place. My father works in a mill when there's work about, and my mother keeps a corner shop to help out. I got a scholarship in 'thirty-seven but I couldn't take it up. There was no way of making up the grant, so I took a course at a teachers' training college and a year's practical. I was going to complete the course when war broke out and would have qualified by now but I couldn't have hoped for anything like this. Frankly I was amazed when the agency put me up. They must be pretty hard pressed.'

He took the whisky but didn't sip it.

'What attracted you to teaching in the first place?' and Earnshaw replied, after a moment's hesitation, 'The subject itself. History. I could never get enough of it. I've hardly read anything but history since I was a kid.'

'Were you going to specialise in any period?'

'Eventually, or so I hoped. Military history. But I'm not so sure now. The real thing dulls the appetite, doesn't it?'

'No, you only think it does. Then you read and talk yourself to the point where you're convinced you could win a war on your own if they gave you the chance and why not? We couldn't make a worse botch of it than your lot or mine, could we?'

'You won yours eventually.'

'We don't seem to have.' Then, impulsively, 'You were there when it happened. How does it look now?'

Earnshaw took his time answering. Then he said, with conviction, 'A lot better than it looked then.'

'Because of the Battle of Britain?'

'Not entirely. Mainly for quite another reason. We're on our own now. It's up to us, all of us, not a gaggle of generals, who don't seem to have learned much since your show. And not cluttered by Allies either. That always affords a better field of fire. You're a history man, aren't you, Headmaster?' and when David nodded, 'I keep making comparisons. The performances we put up against even bigger odds at places like Crecy and Agincourt. And later against Spain, in the sixteenth century. Allies slow us down, somehow. Politics keep coming into it and we lose unity, sense of purpose and direction. We'll win all right. Handsomely, I'd say.'

He realised he had taken an immense liking to the boy – he could only think of him as someone a little senior to, say, Boyer about the time he had beguiled the Lower Fourth with his fit, or Winterbourne, when he appeared out of the storm to steer him down to that cave beside the torrent. There was real substance here, plus a quiet, deadly kind of confidence in himself and his world, and it had a tremendously bracing effect on the spirit. 'We'll win all right…'; he had heard it, or its equivalent, so often in the last few months, but the expression of confidence had never carried Earnshaw's quiet conviction, a conviction based, he assumed, on experience rather than yesterday's newspaper headlines. It was a tonic, too, at such a time, with so much confusion and rumour and propaganda lapping across the country.

He heard himself say, echoing old Algy Herries, 'No need to go back if you don't have to… we can put you up in the President's room… we always keep a room for the Old Boys' President, that's his privilege… I can lend you some pyjamas and we'll root out a toothbrush…' an old, old record, playing a tune that was able to inject him with confidence of a kind he had never been able to find in this room, not even in his most tranquil days, when Armageddon was only a dire possibility.

He jumped up and called through to Chris, 'Mr Earnshaw will be staying to lunch and dinner, Chris. Will you tell Rigby? He's out front somewhere…'

And then, like the final touch of an artist's brush completing the picture, the bell began to clang as Gibson, deputising for Killerton, the official bell-ringer in term time, summoned the Sunsetters to lunch, and they came clattering down from the library where they were having what Buck Suttram called 'a jam session'. The scrape of their boots passing along the quad arcade reminded him
of the touchline supporters who had witnessed Nicolson's surprise victory in the 1918 house final. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Earnshaw's surprised look and thought, 'I daresay he's wondering what the hell he has let himself in for but he'll soon find out, and live to thank his stars maybe, as I did once, but had stopped doing lately…'

The President's room was still on the top storey of the head's house, above the old sanatorium, and he left Earnshaw there, telling him he would call up the stairwell when lunch was ready.

It was some time since he had been up here and he stopped on the landing to take in the south-eastern aspect of the moor, glittering under hoar frost as far as the copses climbing the western slopes above Bamfylde Bridge. It was a view he remembered from his very earliest days, the short end of the Lent term, 1918. It framed the sense of renewal and continuity Earnshaw had stimulated.

Almost everything that he had experienced over the last twenty-two years was compressed into the scene. The early runs, whipping in laggards like Dobson, Letherett and Driscoe; the coming of Beth and the twins; that tiny blur of white under Stone Cross that was Boyer's cottage; state funerals of veterans like Bat Ferguson and Judy Cordwainer; the materialisation of Chris, with Ulrich Meyer in tow; the Sunday pilgrimages of a thousand gourmets to Ma Midden's window for pies and pasties; and away to the left, where the smooth fold of the hillside narrowed to the goyle, that idyllic scene played by Blades and a woman who had brought him a son he could never acknowledge, save in his heart.

Peace, of a kind that had eluded him for sixteen dismal months, stole over him, ironing out the stresses of wartime turmoil, easing the smart of wounds caused by the sacrifice of boys like Briarley, Skidmore, Christopherson, Graves-Jones, Hislop, Churchill and little Keithley. The winter sun, red as a cider apple, set the plateau aglow, picking up the quartz in the scatter of boulders up there, full of muted promise somehow, that the new year would be different, more positive, signposting a road back to sanity and ultimate fulfilment.

He drank it all in thankfully, his thinning hair lifting in the strong draught that searched these landings at this time of year. Then, turning back to the stairhead, he stepped briskly down to ground level, remembering that sixteen days from now the unnatural quiet of the sprawl of buildings would be shattered by the clamour of his enormous family, drawn back to him from what he had come to think of, in his years up here, as the ends of the earth.

1. After surviving three years in the trenches, David is shell-shocked and removed from the world, a mere husk of flesh and bone. What are some of the things that contribute to his rediscovery of identity and purpose? Are there other things that could have helped? What recalls a human being to life after so much pain?

2. David doesn't immediately go home to visit his family when he returns from the front because he says he needs privacy. Was that the only reason? What would going home have done for his condition?

3. There are numerous moments of quiet contemplation and small moments of kindness that help define characters in the book. One such event is the stationmaster who called David 'lad' while he was on his way up to his interview at Bamfylde. Another was Algy's story of the Bamfylde boys helping the baby on the train. What other stories can you think of that demonstrate the sense of community around Bamfylde?

4. What makes David such a good teacher? What most endears him to his students?

5. How would you describe the educational philosophy at Bamfylde? Is it typical or radical? Does it sound like a place you would like to send your children? Why or why not?

6. Herries describes David as a bridge between the older teachers and the students. Compare each generation, from Herries to David to Boyer, taking into account their historical place and influences. Is one any more naïve than
the other? Is each successive generation smarter or better informed? What kind of progress do you see?

7. David is called a 'Bolshie' in the beginning, referring to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Boyer later calls him a Tory. Where would David's views put him on today's political spectrum?

8. Look at the relationships between Herries, David, and students such as Boyer. How is fatherhood portrayed in this novel? How does each headmaster fulfil the role of a father?

9. David is attracted to three strong women throughout his life: Beth, Julia Darbyshire, and Chris. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? How does David come to depend on women throughout the novel? What do they provide that he doesn't have?

10. How is sex portrayed in the novel? Do you believe that it is a realistic portrayal?

11. Herries view of history is 'Two steps up, and one and a half steps down.' Do you agree? Are things always slowly improving?

12. What is it about Bamfylde that David finds so soothing? What do children, both his students and his own, represent to David? Hope? Renewal? Beth says that David would see a child of his own as 'a kind of answer to what you and all those others had to put up with all those years.' Was she right?

13. How is marriage portrayed in the book? Compare David's two marriages. Are they similar in any way? How does David change in the time between each marriage?

14. David says to Christine after she runs away, 'Isn't being my wife purpose enough?' Do you agree with David that being someone's spouse is purpose enough in life? Is being someone's spouse purpose enough for David?

15. David overcomes many personal disputes during his time at Bamfylde. Howarth says to David, 'In a place like this you don't fight with drawn swords, my boy. You find a nice little spot behind a chimney and snipe.' Was Howarth right, or simply being sarcastic? What is David's style of confrontation? What about Algy's? Which is more effective?

16. Do you agree with David's attitude towards Blunt and the war memorial? Is war profiteering money an inappropriate means of honouring the dead?

17. How does David's working class background affect his teaching style and attitudes? Are they a help or a source of prejudice?

18. 'A man shouldn't compromise with his search for personal fulfilment.' David says this regarding his reasons for not marrying Julia. Is this always true? What can or must be compromised in a marriage?

19. Looking objectively at Alcock's reign as headmaster, what was the underlying reason he didn't fit in? Was he a fair man? Was it his disregard for Bamfylde's individuality – did he simply not love the place enough? If so, what does this say about Bamfylde as a community and institution?

20. Was Alcock's death a lucky coincidence for David, or do you agree with him when he says 'Victory, at this price, was a kind of defeat'?

21. Alcock and Towser the dog died at the same time, yet the dog's death received more attention. What does this say about how a person (or an animal) is remembered? By his actions or by his love? Or both? What really makes an impact on people's lives?

22. What kind of faith does David have? How is it reflected in the school and his life? Has it changed over his years at Bamfylde? His mother had strong faith; has it influenced how David lives and acts in the world?

23. Looking through the eyes of the enlisting young men, what are the differences between the First and Second World War? Are they going into the war for different reasons? Do you agree with Boyer when he cites David's teaching and philosophy as a major influence in the boys' decision to sign up?

24. Discuss the different approaches David and Howarth take to life and death.

25. Chris sees WWII as a justified war. Do you think her convictions would change had Ian been old enough to enlist or if she had lived in London during the bombings? How does direct involvement change people's views of war?

26. While writing his book,
The Royal Tigress,
David professes to add a human touch to the characters by, 'putting two and two together. Fashions and attitudes change every generation, but people don't.' Do you agree with David or do you think people have changed throughout history? What attitudes have changed since David's time?

27. 'Let others seek what is safe. Safe is the worst of fortune; for the fear of any worse event is taken away.' How does Barnaby's quotation of Ovid apply to this novel? Is it true?

B
ORN IN SOUTH LONDON IN 1912, R.F. DELDERFIELD WAS a journalist, playwright, and a highly successful novelist, renowned for brilliantly portraying slices of English life. He has remained one of England's most beloved novelists, with many of his novels being adapted into television and film, including the landmark BBC miniseries of
To Serve Them All My Days
.