Schooling (9 page)

27

A cricket match was gearing up on the day they came to visit. In the middle of the second over, it would pour, sending boys, soggy in their oversized whites, under trees to assess the sky, on to make damp havoc in the halls of School House. But before the match, the boys were still listening to weather reports on the radio and Father led her across the pitch where heat rose in faltering swells and the breeze-borne stench of some sort of flower came at them again and again. Father went inside the pavilion turned around once and came out. Walking back he said how the stink of linseed snapped him straight back to the days with Treat and Darvish. Not that I’m into that old boy crap, he said, Won’t find me at sixty reliving dorm raids at nine as if the fifty years between were insignificant.

Heard a rumor.

Father is replaced by Aurora Dyer in the pavilion pulling out a cricket bat.

That Fiona Hammond tied you to your bedsprings.

Half-in, half-out, she watches Aurora take a wild swing . . . You look like you’re playing golf . . . she turns back to the field, morning.

What do you know about it, Doodle?

Used to watch them in the park last summer.

I’d take care of Fiona, if you wanted me to. As a friend.

Sounds like you plan murder.

Don’t be melodramatic. It’s not my job to save you. If you’ve got your cuffs pulled down around your wrists for other reasons, say suicide attempts, that’s fair enough. But if Fi Hammond’s messing with my friends, you understand, something has to be done. Nothing to do with you, Kid, I have a reputation to protect.

A whistling sound followed by an alarming crash. A stump bounces off her back, bails roll across the floor. She turns.

Aurora, cricket bat on her shoulder . . . Damn.

And together they sit among the spilled wickets looking across the pitch at School House where the boys’ side begins to light, window by window.

It’s really not that bad, Aurora.

No, it’s far worse. Hell’s empty, all the devils teach here.

The devil didn’t bring her to his university town. The devil didn’t hire bicycles.

Someone told me you’re friendly with Squeak.

Gilbert? No.

Don’t think you’ve got allies here.

He shook out an ankle so his cuff might avoid the chain.

You’re not listening . . . Aurora sticks her with a wicket.

I am listening.

My father has a friend in town. Beatrice. Has me over for tea. Takes me on outings, or we walk her dog through the cemetery. Old enough, but the only one round here who thinks I have a mind. Beatrice, I mean, not the dog.

Other people think you have a mind.

You just said surely, Catrine.
Surely,
exactly as if you were English.

Probably, she had said probably.

In any case, I’ve been at Monstead since I was eleven and when you’re living with teachers they know far too much. They think if you kiss a boy, university’s out the window.

Is that what happened to you?

Never mind about me.

Cyclops said matters at home required your concentration.

What did I say? Never mind about me.

Across the pitch, at School House, a boy calls out a window. The smell of breakfast on a breeze. Double art with Devon in the afternoon, Hamlet with Betts this morning and chemistry chemistry—

Kid.

She looks over.

If he thought about you as often as you hope, he wouldn’t have time to teach.

What’s that supposed to mean.

Want some advice?

Not really.

Don’t trust any of them . . . Aurora gets up . . . Including Squeak.

28

Soft now he comes lo creeping edging over the field pale now permeating now saturating drumroll please for our illumination.

29

Two armchairs, a table, ironing board, footstool. Hiding in the balcony for a smoke because Sophie found it to be
Too fucking cold for the copse
. They sit side by side, critics, feet up on the railing, appraising the empty set. The crackle of tobacco and Sophie’s soft Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth are the only sounds until an offstage murmur floats up.
As for Jimmy he just speaks a different language
from any of us.
Ducking, Sophie makes a production of stabbing the cigarette on 204D. Betts enters stage left, script in hand, crossing to sit in an armchair.
Sweet-stall. It does seem an extraordinary thing for an
educated young man to be occupying himself with.
Occu
py
ing himself— Occupying
himself
with.
You didn’t tell us very much in your letters
— Betts stops. Looks Back in Surprise.

Hello? Who’s there?

Gilbert steps out onto the stage thermos in one hand . . . Sorry to intrude, Patrick. I was enraptured by your performance.

Oh, silly fluff really . . . Betts closes the script with his thumb in it . . . Look Back in Anger. Seemed appropriate. That’s a joke, sir, nothing to be glum about. They wanted an older type for the Colonel. I volunteered. What the hell. A lark.

Burton played your part, am I wrong? At the Royal Court in the fifties.

Ah no you are wrong on that one. He played Jimmy, I believe . . . Betts kicks a chair gently . . . Have a seat.

Why not. I’m in need of diversion.

Next to her, Sophie lies in a hypotenuse across the balcony steps.

And what are you in need of escape from, Mr. Gilbert? Trying to beat some sense into the lower forms, some, what is it, periodics, elements?

Gilbert nods to a teapot on the table between them . . . That’s a prop I presume . . . as he unscrews the thermos . . . Have some of this . . . he pours.

A snorter?

Coffee . . . passing the cup to Betts.

Cheers.

Haven’t been sleeping well . . . Gilbert sets down his thermos on the floor . . . Nothing seems to make sense.

Hot milk with golden syrup. Works every time.

Everyone’s got an answer.

Has an answer.

That as well.

Running water won’t freeze, as they say.

Meaning?

You’re thinking too much. What’s on your mind?

Well that’s the problem isn’t it. Not much of anything.

No dead aunties stashed in the attic.

None I’m aware of. Though a peculiar smell drifts down from time to time.

Hoah . . . Betts laughs, filtering coffee through his teeth . . . Very good . . . taking down the cup he passes it to Gilbert . . . Wonder if the monsters have finished Prep and are setting about on a rampage yet.

Gilbert leans down to refill. When the light catches his thin nose like that like fire. Teachers bunkered below in their foxhole sharing war, whiskey. Back-home tales. He takes a sip, passes the cup back to Betts.

Thanks . . . sip, brood . . . You’re a more patient man than I, aren’t you, Gilbert?

Not sure what you mean by that.

Been at Monstead seventeen years. What keeps us here, do you think? When we could be teaching at the university level. Publishing dissertations. Vocations suitable for men of our education. Pedigree. I think of it often. Revisit the circumstances which brought me here. Was it Marjorie? Difficult to recall but for the life of me I can’t honestly believe I had a hand in this path.

Is it as bad as that?

Don’t you feel it? Brain soggy from disuse. Imagine for a moment we were surrounded by minds like our own. Serious conversation instead of prying beaks off stubborn boys. Leave these schoolchildren to people like Devon.

Women, you mean, sir?

I suppose I do . . . Betts sniffs . . . Is that so awful?

Gilbert places his palm on the teapot beside him as if on the head of a small child . . . I believe, Mr. Betts. That there are ardent minds here. At Monstead.

Perhaps when they first arrived. But encouraged by their more moronic peers, they metamorphose into slugs. When I remember my own days, dialogues I shared with a boy named Mahesh. That was a time. Well, I can’t imagine even our sixth formers speak about elevated topics.

That’s hardly fair. What about Wharton?

Owen Wharton . . . Betts seeks the answer in the footlights . . . Owen has. Enthusiasm. Reminds me sometimes of Mahesh. He had that. That. Spark. That’s all I ask for, a spark. Let us know a light’s on somewhere.

There, you see . . . Gilbert leans back . . . They’re not all sheep. Of course Owen has the advantage of only coming to us in the Lower Sixth. Mental paralysis takes more than a year or so to set in.

But you do grant that Wharton has a gift?

Ask me in June.

I find that unbearably pessimistic.

Gilbert, you’ve been with us what. Four years?

Please don’t suggest it’s only a matter of time before I begin thinking that way.

I can only give you the benefit of my own experience. Yesterday I had one of them inform me that obliterate meant unable to read or write. I mean . . . Betts reaches for the thermos . . . Don’t see me as cantankerous. You make me feel old.

You make me feel naïve.

Tell me this is where you planned to end up. Teaching the same experiments year after year. You wanted your own discoveries. Number one hundred and four on the periodic table, Gilbertium? Working in a lab in California? Before Clara was born, I had my course mapped out, I can tell you. Doctorate at Harvard. Thesis on a French surrealist. But, as they say, Gods laugh at plans. They certainly did in my case.

I didn’t have a map. Wasn’t so ambitious.

Still, no one could accuse us of not making the best of it.

Don’t you find, Mr. Betts, that children can inspire as much as your doctoral candidates?

Mr. Gilbert, I think you are mistaking the pleasure of articulation for inspiration.

No, I find—

But then one’s lectures all become the same after the first year or two, easier to do so.

—that their way of looking at the world is not the same as mine.

That’s right, theirs usually involves the pub.

Gilbert slowly crosses one leg over the other, a careful finger to his lip . . . Often it is more imaginative, more hopeful. I find some of my pupils more intelligent than adults. Some see possibilities that never occur to me, others have a unique way of phrasing or finding—

Goodness you are a pollyanna aren’t you? Perhaps in the old days, thirty, forty years ago when the school was turning out ambassadors, MPs. Can you imagine a politician coming out of this place now. Like silk from a sow’s ear which is a metaphor.

Yes I realize—

And of your pupils, who do you find has, what was it? A unique way of phrasing?

Hum, I.

I see you with that American girl . . . Betts inspects his script . . . I had her read Ophelia when—

Pardon, but she’s no Ophelia.

Yes, her accent didn’t make for—

I’m certain her accent in no way compromised Shakespeare’s poetry.

Such an odd manner, the air of clarity, as if she really sees you as if—

Well, she—

I don’t mind telling you it quite unnerves me. Sometimes—

Yes I’d rather you didn’t tell me actually.

And those photographs, imagine—

I’m sure those boys had quite a hand in it.

Still she glowers so—the American. It’s a disconcerting knowing. As if she can see right through one. And so dreary. Why? Do the clouds still hang—

Well, her mother passed away not yet a year ago . . . Gilbert taps the arm of his chair . . . Her father then immediately moved them three thousand miles away.

Still—

No, sir there is no still . . . Gilbert rises sharply . . . The girl . . . pacing . . . The girl has plenty of life in her . . . he snatches the cup from Betts’ hand where it approaches his mouth.

I say . . . only the space around his missing tea . . . What are you getting so riled about?

I find your musings quite unsympathetic, quite depressing I must say.

I beg—

No . . . stooping again for his thermos . . . They are the musings of a small mind . . . turning to say, projecting to the balcony . . . And that sir, is not a metaphor.

Exit Mr. Gilbert stage right. Betts sits for a moment hand still shaped for Gilbert’s plastic cup. He looks up to the balcony.

On the balcony, Sophie’s kicking her to go but she is caught by the lights. More play. Come back Gilbert. Down below, Betts pages through the script, trying to pick up his motivation. Sophie leaves her, slides to the exit, squeak of the door. Betts looks away, looks back.

30

I am not made for England. This finite. Decorous resolve. A grim bearing up. I long for Paris. For an impromptu spirit, a laissez faire. Mahesh says Paris exists only for its possibility, that one should avoid tourism at all costs.

We squabble. Mahesh says it is base and pointless to compare literature to the plastic arts when I simply voiced a preference. Sculpture seems to me more an athletic enterprise than an aesthetic one. Photographs offend, for they imply truth. And painting. How static the tableau of Caravaggio is compared to the life on one page of Flaubert. In reading a book one is never forced to suffer the elbows and umbrellas of outraged mothers or the squalling of their infants. And spinning from gallery to gallery from Rubens to Goya to Degas leaves you at the end of the day with a palimpsest of conflicting style, form and color. An ocular muddle. As you emerge blinking into the sunshine you have nothing more pressing on your mind than the need for a toilet or a sandwich. All that’s retained are the four or five reproductions purchased from the museum gift shop which disintegrate in your sweaty palm as you cross the street.

Patch of blue as I crossed the gardens near Fenton with Mahesh. A Wildflower I’d never seen. Made notes to research it in botany books when I returned.

I told Mahesh I will never marry. Nothing can rival freedom. Warm feet can, Mahesh countered, Fat buttocks and soft skin can. The solitary life, I said, Is derided by those who buckle to convention and later regret it. Mahesh said if I am homosexual I should just say so instead of coming across high-minded, etc. I said I simply plan a life without fetters, regardless of man or woman. A life of one’s own. Mahesh burst out laughing.

Awake at dawn to a thick white fog softening the quadrangle. A conspiracy of droplets. A cabal of molecules. A form appears between buildings, delving the fog in swaths. Mahesh. Ecstatically I tear across the quad and immediately smack into a bench. Limping, I reach him. It’s
Veronica persica
. The blue flower at Fenton. Known as Persian speedwell, I looked it up. Mahesh keeps walking, replies mildly, Patrick, you will lose sight of truth by pursuing it so avidly.
Avidly
. Like a child gorging chocolate.

Hypocrites. They crowd into Mahesh’s study to listen to Foster’s recital. How he grovels for Mahesh’s approval. Watched Mahesh lazily accept cigarettes, compliments from these fickle boys until I couldn’t bear the hypocrisy and stared moodily out the window. The rendition was atrocious, beyond reproach. Yet Mahesh clenched his cigarette between his teeth in order to clap vigorously. One imagines the Russians are not such sycophants. As soon as Foster left the room, all the knives came out and one boy fell off the bed he laughed so hard. When we were alone again, I fervently made Mahesh swear he would never give me false praise. He offered to give none instead.

This mind betrays me with interruptions. Desultory thoughts of tennis scores, images of boyhood. Tangents, non sequiturs. I long for a funnel of reasoning, thought spiraling to a critical point. Left instead with this gyre. Backed out of the Christmas Ball at the last moment. Mahesh asked was it a pair of nice ankles I was frightened of meeting, perhaps a pair attached to shapely legs and so on. I said I was suffering severe insomnia, my head rattled with ideas. Mahesh suggested that rather than take myself so seriously, I try hot milk and syrup. It was after midnight when I heard him on the landing. I threw open the door. Well? Mahesh stopped, leaned himself against the wall and regarded me with a steady gaze of inebriation. Thousands of men have ideas, he said finally, rousing himself from the wall. Most are not important. He began to climb the next flight. I called out, Ideas or Men? He continued walking. I called again, Important ideas or Important men? He didn’t answer.

I tell Mahesh that Vermeer was a mathematician, that his paintings are abject studies for perspective. I say it to goad but he simply stares out my window. I know Mahesh finds debate with me tedious. But why must we always talk about paintings, which I loathe, when I could tell him a hundred things about Hamlet.

Mahesh has accepted the role of Claudius. Against my advice. The rehearsals drain him. Today I dragged him in off the landing when I heard him pass by. Why do you never come to see me? Hating how petulant I sounded. Mahesh hovered in the doorway for two minutes then left saying, And what of this solitary life you aim for, Patrick? When he went, I felt an actual stab in my side. Loss for his easy warmth. I like to look across and see him arranged in my window, legs propped against the casement, cutting the window into triangles. I went into my pockets and threw a coin across the room. An auction of lacunae. Art will save you or kill you.

Oxbow. How grubby it is, provincial. The smear of clouds, overheard inanities in the newsagents. Mahesh, virtually disappeared. Paris, Paris, I mumble mounting the steps to my room. Unlocking the door, I cast about at my drab belongings, four salvaged tea bags drying on the sill, a stack of half-read books. My contribution to literature: dog-ears. Image of myself alone at fifty, sleep fitful due to the niggling inconsistencies of fin de siècle poetry. Here on the threshold, what can possibly come of this. To love is impossible, to articulate, debasing. My own bottomless inadequacy. Literature fails. The novel isn’t. Life ebbs.

Easter lunch at Mahesh’s parents. Traveling down, a cold dry day. Smoke collected on the horizon. After lunch we took a ramble to shoot rabbits, or foxes, I wasn’t clear on which, I didn’t plan to shoot anything. I suggested to Mahesh that he join me in Paris. Throw off the shackles of this timetable nation, said I, Escape the dewlapped old guard frowning upon queue-jumpers. I was in full throttle when Mahesh cut me off, Why leave England, Patrick, when you delight so in being miserable? Now, that’s hardly fair, I said. We walked in silence for a bit. Finally I attempted a joke. Something wrong with fighting a disposition for indolence? Mahesh shrugged, There’s nothing to deplore in a life without literature. Oh no, I contended, There is plenty to deplore. Patrick, he said, his tone cutting, You
do
nothing. Nothing. You conform ideas. You shift this from here to there. And your ideas . . . he trailed off. Mahesh was receiving raves for his Claudius, it appeared to be affecting him for the worse. He strode out in front. I followed, poking the ground with my rifle. So it is better then, I called out, Like you, to parrot? Mahesh stopped violently. Patrick, he said, You should not go to Paris, you should marry. Marriage? I laughed. I think not. A lifetime spent pore to pore? Overhead, a brace of birds burst across the sky. You should take a wife and have a child, he said. Only a man of genius can bear a solitary life. And without further ado, Mahesh turned, brought up his rifle and shot down a mallard.

We spent the night in his boyhood room. I slept on the floor, woke at five, shivering in my bedroll. I watched the sun move a lamp across the ceiling and down one wall. Mahesh slept curled away, feet dropping off the bed. His spine, knuckles against the blanket.

The next day we broke through a thicket of alder, following a stream which snaked across the sparse woodland. Now and again cracks of gunshot reverberated through our valley. Coming upon a clearing where the stream emptied into a pool, we saw that lightning had recently laid waste to several large trees. One alder staggered, caught between his brothers, borne like a drunk. Another spanned the stream, sagging against lichenous rocks, branches splayed. Pinned underwater by one large branch, floating pinkly, was a dead sheep.

She bobbed slightly in the current, jaw contorted in a manic rictus, muzzle pierced by her own mandible. The bone was extraordinarily white, polished by the rushing stream. Foxes had discovered the carcass, the sheep’s belly was ripped open. In the fast water, nettles and leaves swept by her moored innards. Oh girl, Mahesh kneeled. He looked up at me. I turned to vomit.

We were silent on the walk back. I knew. Suddenly Mahesh spoke up. Patrick, you will watch your child as it takes its first tottering steps, you will have ample metaphor for a life. You will run to the encyclopedia for the name of the common Cowslip, you will know what it’s all for. No, I cried out, seeing the sullen wastrel, changeling in an oily anorak, the disdain, come to me in my decrepitude, mocking my malapropisms. No. I resisted. I began to weep. I had nothing. A full stop. To unfasten my skin, to climb out. But there was no one to climb into. I could offer myself a cup of tea or boot myself into the night. Nothing to do but go back in, unnerved by the temperature. Time to admit I had no intention of removing myself to the shadowed nooks of Paris. I was suckled on Fear and not about to renounce an old friend. I was never a genius. I would take a wife stupider than I so as to have a palliative. Alibi for a life of habit.

We stood, Mahesh and I, looking down on the rude packages of pasture. I had always held England against itself. Come on now, look. A spiral of smoke at the horizon. Landscape. See a forky road cut the fields. There was yellow, green. Pleasure in it. Enough. Let me settle for a gentle obscurity. Constable, Mahesh said, considering me. Yes, I agreed, beaten, Constable.