Cuthbertson paused and gave his Senior Tutor a meaning look.
‘It might set him off on dangerous courses,’ Bishop said.
‘Exactly.’
‘It might lead him to question our authority.’
‘Quite so.’
Bishop felt he had hit a winning streak. ‘It might – ’ he began eagerly, but Cuthbertson had raised a hand.
‘I see you have followed my reasoning,’ he said. ‘I realize you erred out of zeal. You must not think your devotion to the School goes unnoticed.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bishop felt a slight lump in his throat.
‘Was it you, by the way, that put the flowers in here?’
‘It was, yes.’
‘Nice thought,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Appreciate it. Had to get rid of them, though. They … distracted me.’
There was silence for a while, then Cuthbertson said slowly, ‘I was perhaps a little hard on you, but I have had to be hard on myself lately.’
‘How do you mean?’ Bishop said, with immediate concern.
‘Well, I have been a good deal troubled of late by doubts of various kinds.’
‘Doubts?’
‘Not, I hasten to add, doubts as to the value of what we are doing here.’ Cuthbertson paused, looked in a cautious, almost stealthy way at the clumsy attentiveness of Bishop’s posture, the bemused loyalty of that florid face. The body of his Senior Tutor seemed to fall naturally into ungainliness. It was as if there were some private horror in Bishop at the implications of physical grace or elegance. However, he did not dwell on this thought, as it took him too close to Bishop’s psyche, where he had no wish to be.
‘I have never faltered in that,’ he said. ‘Never once. Not from the moment that big insolent brown fellow sat up and looked at me.’
‘Big insolent brown fellow? Do you mean that chap from Haiti? What was his name now? Used to wear an earring, just one earring, in his – ’
‘I am referring to the rat,’ Cuthbertson said, rather coldly.
‘Rat?’ Bishop raised a hand and laid it across the top of his head. His mind was a complete blank. Now was the time, he thought, to launch the bombshell about Mafferty, ‘Speaking of rats – ’ he began.
‘Never mind, never mind.’ Cuthbertson said. ‘All I mean is, that it is not the value and importance of our work that I am doubting, but whether our standards are going to prevail. Some kind of element is creeping in, Bishop. There is a spirit abroad which I don’t like.’
‘Do you mean in the School?’
‘I see it in the School. I see it in the world at large. A principle of disorder. An active principle. I am not talking about disorder by default or neglect. I am referring to the ancient evil of anarchy.’
‘We must fight it,’ Bishop said.
Cuthbertson’s head had begun to ache again, rather badly. ‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ he said. ‘My mind seems to get very clouded these days. Personal issues seem to intrude. The past, matters from the past, come into my mind in the most extraordinary way. I don’t quite know how to describe it–they seem to take up all the space. Lately it has been some daffodils I once gave to my wife.’
‘Daffodils? You need a rest, Donald. It is a very long time since you had a holiday.’
‘H’m, yes.’ Cuthbertson nodded, cunningly pretending to believe that the School could function in his absence. There were some things too burdensome for Bishop to know.
‘I don’t want to add to your troubles,’ Bishop said. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve had a negative response to our enquiries about Mafferty.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Trinity College, Cambridge, have no record of any such person.’
‘You mean he has no degree from there?’
‘He does not seem to have ever been a member of the student body.’
‘My God,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘He has been deceiving us all this time. He has been posing as a graduate. Why wasn’t this known before? I remember quite distinctly sending you a memo on the subject.’
‘It took them some time to go through their records,’ Bishop said, glancing down at his feet. He would not for worlds have told the Principal that his handwriting had been deteriorating for weeks, was now so illegible that no one any longer made any serious attempt to read it. He himself did his best to interecept as many of Cuthbertson’s notes and memoranda as possible, in an effort to keep the knowledge of this deterioration from spreading.
‘My God,’ Cuthbertson said again. ‘The deceit of it. The sheer, barefaced deceit of it.’ He was much too disturbed by the news to go further into the reasons for the delay. ‘I think we both need a drink,’ he said.
He opened a drawer low down in his desk, took out a half bottle of brandy and two glasses. ‘For medicinal purposes,’ he said, pouring out.
‘Here’s to the School,’ Bishop said. ‘Semper floreat.’ He felt the need for a drink after this monumental wigging he had received from the chief. He had really been hauled over the carpet. He had deserved it too, no doubt about that. Richly. He opened his mouth to let the fiery breath emerge.
‘I knew all the time there was something wrong with that fellow,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘I’ve got a shrewd instinct in these matters. No dedication, no idealism. That was my diagnosis. I made allowances, on the grounds that a chap with a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, can’t be all bad. Now I find there is not even this to be urged in mitigation. For two months he has been standing before our students, without a qualification. Think of the harm he may have done.’
‘I could boot the fellow all round the garden,’ Bishop said. ‘Gladly. It’s times like this that I really feel sorry we don’t have conscription any more. Six weeks square-bashing would do fellows like that a world of good.’
‘Think of the sheer moral baseness of it,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Claiming to have a degree and not in fact having one. He didn’t even follow a course there, which makes the whole thing more heinous.’
‘The fellow’s a real anguis in herba, no doubt about that,’ Bishop said.
‘He’ll have to go, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘The sooner the better. I’ll speak to him after the Briefing Session.’
‘Are you going to let him attend the Degree Ceremony?’ ‘Well, I don’t want to be too hard on him,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘After all, it will be his last. And who knows, perhaps he will realize, even at this late stage, as he sees the students going proudly up to receive the degrees they have earned, perhaps he will finally understand that there are no short cuts in this life, you get nowhere without hard work and self-discipline.’
6
After lunch, quite suddenly, the sky clouded over, and a light rain began to fall. It was still raining as Lavinia set out the tea-things for herself and Mr Honeyball. She glanced from time to time out of the window at the garden, where the soft heedless rain went on falling, slanting down between the alleys formed by the low hedges, on to the grass. No wind, she noticed: leaf and flower hung motionless, passive before the rain. Would Mr Honeyball be late? In her pleasurable excitement she visualized him as he would arrive, stepping along the wet paving stones to the door, his narrow shoes gleaming, lightly stepping, his thin pale face and rimless glasses questing alertly, in his hand a slim black briefcase with gilt fittings and clasps. She thought of his meticulous moustache, two narrow slanting lines of dark brown hair, like Ronald Colman’s. It was a sophisticated moustache, and below it Mr Honeyball’s mouth was compressed, patient.
She switched on the radio and like an omen of successful consummation it was one of the old-timers, David Lovejoy, just starting to sing ‘Dangerous Midnight’. Lavinia joined in eagerly, in her slightly clotted soprano, as she moved here and there, setting all in readiness.
Mr Honeyball was not a stranger, exactly, he had visited the school several times in his capacity of Ministry of Education official, three times in the last month, in fact. Donald of course was worried
by this; he didn’t like this interest on the part of the Ministry, something about a take-over, but why should the State be interested in a little place like theirs? No, she thought she knew why Mr Honeyball came so frequently, and it had nothing to do with his official function. He came in need. So while not technically a stranger, in the world of romance he was one; in that rainbow-tinted, many-splendoured zone he could be regarded as such, as someone who might suddenly, fulminatingly, be glimpsed among indifferent faces, who might declare himself, and this might happen now, today, because this world of love was a completely different world, where everything began anew.
Cups, saucers, bowl, jug were all deep blue stoneware. Spoon and tongs silver. On the low rectangular pine table the whole ensemble looked tasteful. ‘Borrowed love, stolen kisses, da-dee-da-dee-da.’ David Lovejoy, there was a man for you, none of your unisex persons, tight trousers but what was there inside them? No, not one of that lot. She liked a man who was a real man. Mr Honeyball was slender, he was a different sort, more of a brain worker, but there was a clench and pounce about him, that neatness was fierce, she thought. He could be in one of those films you saw, in some tropical corner of empire. When we had the empire. Not giving in for one second, either to the debilitating climate or the lax ways of the natives. Yearning inside, of course. Repressed and malarial. And so sexy and steamy out there in the bush, on safari, or tea-planting, or one of those Forgotten Men in the French Foreign Legion. Always dress for dinner, and so forth. Well, that was the British way. But my God, she thought, how their sheer appetite must build up over the weeks and months, all pent up inside them. Boundless ambitions possessed Lavinia suddenly. She wished she could multiply herself to satisfy all that need, bear the white men’s burden, patrol the skies like Super-woman, zooming down on desperate men. Mr Honeyball at least she could get to. He has that walk, she thought, as if it were all accumulated inside him, that tense, rather jerky way of walking, the feet flicking outwards, a gait absolutely redolent of sexual energy. There was a lot in the way men walked. Donald had a padding obedient walk, as if he were answering some call…
Well, here she was, perfumed and prepared, ready and willing to assuage Mr Honeyball, turn him into a sated stroller, if only they could get on to those terms. That had been the problem hitherto; things had been kept too formal, too much at a conversational level, with Mr Honeyball shy and neat, not allowing himself to relax even, let alone unbutton. This time, Lavinia had decided, things would be taken a stage further. ‘Once you have found him never let him go.’ A deep-chested man, David Lovejoy. He was a long-distance lorry driver before his leap to fame.
She checked the tea-things once again, while the voice of the former lorry-driver continued, full of power and yearning, announcing the miraculous dream come true, the disappointments of the years expunged, all dross purged in that moment of recognition, and a perfect sexual union to follow, transport upon transport and throe upon throe until the shudders of the last trump. That was the message and he was putting it over well.
Lavinia found herself entirely in accord. That sudden blinding moment that redeems all had been taken for granted since her earliest girlhood, the possibility of it implicit in practically all she had read since then. The words she was listening to, the swirling sweetness of the accompanying strings, were not bemoaning a void but signalling faith in the possibilities of life. On some enchanted occasion one stood before another person and knew. This simple faith had survived all conjugal disillusionment, all knowledge of her own carnality. It was as vigorous now, this warm rainy afternoon, as she set out the tea-things, as it had ever been.
On a large, curly-edged plate, blue and white, with a pattern of mandarins and dwarf trees, she laid out the sandwiches, some egg, some ham. She had trimmed off the crusts for the sake of elegance – Mr Honeyball, she had observed, was not by any means a gross feeder, whatever the degree of relish. Around this centre-piece were smaller plates, bearing eclairs, meringues, small amenable doughnuts. Everything was in readiness. David Lovejoy ended on a high note. The music throbbed into silence. A diffident voice with a northern accent spoke briefly of next day’s weather, predicting that it would be unsettled. This was succeeded by another voice, which said, rather sternly, Here are the news headlines: One more victim of last night’s bomb outrage has died in hospital, bringing the total of deaths to twenty-four. The Prime Minister and leaders of the Opposition are due to meet one hour from now to discuss the possibility of forming a Government of National Unity. No statement of the agenda has yet been released, but the Prime Minister himself is expected to make a brief statement after the meeting. Reports still coming in from Bangladesh speak of widespread –
Pouting with boredom and disgust Lavinia switched the set off.
In the Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Mrs Mercer and Mrs Greenepad were listening to the radio too, the latter to the very same news bulletin that had so disgusted Lavinia, the former to ballet music. They each had their own set now: the radio ordered for Mrs Mercer by Lavinia had been delivered some ten minutes previously; and after a brief impromptu dance of delight by the old lady, in which hair-pins and exclamations had been shed all over her side of the room, it had been at once turned on. Now the two old ladies were sitting at opposite ends of the room, each listening with a harassed expression to her own set, each doing her level best to ignore the sounds emerging from the other. Mrs Greenepad, as was her wont, was listening to the news, for pleasurable confirmation that things were falling apart; Mrs Mercer had decided to celebrate her new-found independence by listening to a concert by the B.B.C. Northern Orchestra, leader Paul Beard, which was at present playing Prokofiev’s overture to Romeo and Juliet. Neither of the old ladies was able to enjoy her chosen programme because of the distraction caused by the other. And this distraction was increasing, because each of them kept raising the volume.
Who actually started it was destined to be a source of acrimonious discussion for a long time to come, but Mrs Greenepad was probably the aggressor. Old as she was, long accustomed to unquestioned supremacy and sole control of all transmissions she did not at first fully appreciate the challenge. She had reacted quite uncompromisingly to the swirling of the ballet music by giving her volume control a quarter turn. Her room-mate, determined, after the long years of deprivation, to assert herself, had promptly done the same. Ballet music at a loud volume has a very sinister, threatening sound, and she was beginning to feel frightened, but she was resolved not to give in.
It now seems clear, Mrs Greenepad’s announcer said stridently, that the Town Criers are not the group responsible for the latest bomb outrages. Of the remaining claimants the most likely would appear to be –
Mrs Greenepad, though listening intently, failed to hear the name of the terrorist organization concerned and, in annoyance at this failure, which she attributed to her room-mate’s having turned her set up again, she gave her volume control another quarter turn. At this volume the voice of the announcer was distorted; the moment had been reached when any further buildup would be counter-productive. Mrs Mercer, aware of increased blare from behind her, escalated in her turn – too much, because her hands were trembling, and clumsy in their movements. The music was now thunderous. Mercutio was being slain under circumstances damaging to the eardrums, cymbals crashing and ripping through bull roar of bassoons, drums pounding like Mrs Mercer’s own heartbeats madly amplified. She was badly frightened now and felt a sensation of being drawn in, engulfed in that fury of sound. But she persisted, not really any longer by an effort of will, but because she felt bound to the wheel, and must endure. With the tiny part of her brain not blasted and numbed by the sound, she obliged her head and right hand to move in palsied time to the music, in an attempt to bluff Emily, convey an impression of insouciance.
….reported earlier to have lost an arm, has merely suffered the loss of thumb and forefinger on his right hand. In some cases, owing to extensive facial injuries, identification has not been possible. The Archbishop of Cante
rbury has described the explosion as an outrage.
About time, about time, Mrs Greenepad thought wildly. About time the church took a hand. The music had subsided considerably. Mrs Greenepad, not knowing this was merely to mark the expiry of Mercutio, and assuming it to be a concession on the enemy’s part, lowered her own set by a quarter turn. Almost at once the music gathered strength again, adequately to represent Romeo’s guilt and rage.
This rage of Romeo’s coincided with Mrs Greenepad’s at what she imagined to be Edwina’s perverse refusal to compromise. She turned up her own set even louder than before, to its maximum in fact. The announcer’s voice now became extremely difficult to make out, so great was the distortion. He was yelling as if he had himself begun to suffer some of the agony he described daily.
… vultures grey and evil, bellowed the announcer. Dead children wrapped up in – Plasticine? No. Polythene, probably. Aha! Mrs Greenepad screamed to herself. Where did they get the polythene from? Her gender has not so far been revealed to the press, but a statement – Her gender? That couldn’t be right … The music had now got inextricably mingled with the news, forming a crashing, swirling accompaniment to the boom of the words. Mrs Greenepad twisted round furiously, saw her roommate still bravely nodding her dishevelled head to the music. She was unable, however, to see the expression of terror on Edwina’s face …
The Big Day Page 11