“Hamden is unbearable. I think I could kill him easily. I probably shall some day. Making out the test papers seems to fill him with a dismal dry ecstasy. He asks me for suggestions, but never pays any attention to them when I make them. He’s writing a text-book, you know—on précis construction. Grant keeps on saying ‘he needs a woman, you know—not good for a man.’ Then he says—‘so do you, Neville.’ I passed his house on my way down to-night, and that gross cow of a wife of his was pulling down the blinds in the front room. You could see everything she’s got against the light.
“I wish we could meet and have a long talk, like in the old days. I feel very cut off here. I try to keep abreast of things by reading, but really it isn’t easy if you can’t argue it all out with someone, and of course there’s no one here. To-night’s an example. I got some of Schopenhauer’s essays from the library and meant to have a quiet evening with them. Then suddenly I couldn’t seem to be able to focus my attention—I had to get out. So I saw a wretched American film instead. I couldn’t tell you what it was about—it’s a sort of dope to sit in the dark and stare at the screen. A young couple in front of me kept whispering and fondling each other—holding clammy hands—and there was an old woman beside me who went on sighing and weeping over the sad scenes.
“There’s a drunk man just passed outside the house singing Annie Laurie. I think I’ll have to try to get down to Glasgow this week-end—I need a break: I might call and see MacDowell—haven’t had a chat with him for—oh, eighteen months. I think a bit of his cynicism would do me a lot of good . . .”
3
In the Cruach Public Library one evening Neville met Miss Tainsh, junior Modern Languages mistress. She had joined the staff of the Academy the term after he had, and as newcomers they had been drawn together for a little while. But now it was some months since they had talked.
They left the Library together, Miss Tainsh carrying a novel by Arnold Bennett, some poems by Hardy and a book of Scarlatti’s music. Neville had a volume of Shakespearean criticism and a book about Kant. They walked along the street, chatting about school topics.
Miss Tainsh was small and quite pretty. She had a nervous, forlorn manner, and a way of venturing her opinions tentatively, as if in constant fear of being proved wrong in whatever she said. Neville was abstracted. Once, as they chatted, he glanced down at her and appraised detachedly her wide eyes and moist pink lips.
“If one liked to exert oneself,” he thought, “one might, quite easily . . .” And then: “But after all, why exert oneself?”
After a time Miss Tainsh said, in her hesitant way: “I hear you had a—difference of opinion with Mr. Hamden to-day.”
“So it’s gone round already,” said Neville bitterly. Then he added: “I suppose they told you we’d come to blows?”
“Oh no,” she said quickly. Then, hesitantly again: “You—didn’t, did you?”
“Of course not. We—disagreed, that’s all.”
“He must be rather a difficult man to get on with,” she ventured, after a pause. “I’ve only spoken to him once. He’s very uncommunicative, isn’t he.”
“He’s dead,” said Neville vehemently. “He’s got no opinion—nothing—that hasn’t been out of fashion for fifty years. We had our tiff over these wretched test papers. He said I’d marked them too leniently. I told him they were too ridiculously difficult and pedantic for any child.”
“They said that he—threw a book at you.”
“He threw my corrected papers at me. I left them lying on the floor and walked out.”
They reached Miss Tainsh’s home. She lived in a small half-villa with her mother.
“Would you—care to come in for a cup of tea?” she asked, stumbling as always over the words.
“No thanks. I’d better get home—I’ve got some more papers to correct.”
As he made his way towards his lodgings he passed Grant’s house. Mrs. Grant was in the front garden, watering the flowers. The earth had a sweet smell in the cool summer dusk.
“Hello, Neville,” called out Mrs. Grant, in her bluff, larger-than-life way. “George tells me you’ve been rowing with old Hamden.”
“Oh, it was only a difference of opinion. Nothing much.”
She laughed noisily. “What about coming in for a glass of beer?” she called. She had set down her watering-can and was wiping her hands on her apron. He saw how tight her skirt was round the behind and how beefy her calves were.
“No thanks. Got to get home—papers to correct you know.”
In his room he sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. First of all, Miss Tainsh. Her first name, he knew, was Miriam. Then, Mrs. Grant. He had heard Grant call her Florence. Then, Hamden. He thought of him as he had sat at his desk, complaining in his high, querulous voice about the marking of the test papers.
“No dam’ good, Neville—no dam’ good at all.”
Then the thin nostrils wrinkling, the watery eyes straining through the old wire-rimmed spectacles, and the great gaunt hands fumbling awkwardly among the foolscap sheets.
Neville saw nothing ahead of him. It would be another ten years before Hamden retired. Then Grant would became senior master and he would slip into Grant’s job, and some new young devil would come in his place as junior. Suppose he went to another school—the same sort of life would wait him there. He might marry—someone like Miriam Tainsh, if not even Miriam Tainsh herself. Grant had said: “You need a woman, Neville.” A half-villa. Miss Tainsh’s mother a permanent guest in the back room. A visit to the Grants’. Beer and cards—Miriam playing Scarlatti as a diversion.
And then his thoughts drifted and he found himself thinking of Rosemary, his old flame of University days. He remembered how they had sat hand in hand on the beach at Montrose one day after a bathe, listening to the remote sigh of the surf. He remembered the first time he had kissed her—how they had clung together so passionately for a moment, the air full of the perfume of night-scented stock and someone, far-off, playing the Donauwellen Waltzes on an old piano. His thoughts went further—to his mother. He got into bed and lay staring into the darkness. Lost worlds.
“A bloody sentimentalist,” he said to himself. “It’s all past. Leave it alone. Do something. Face up to things. Don’t be a bloody sentimentalist.”
4
Some weeks went by. One evening Neville went to the Grants’ for a meal; one Sunday afternoon he had tea with Miriam Tainsh. At the Grants’ he ate enormously, then sat suppressing his indigestion and laughing in a strained fashion at Grant’s coarse jokes. At Miss Tainsh’s he sat with his tea-cup poised clumsily in his hand, making some sort of conversation with Miriam and her mother. Mrs. Tainsh was a little deaf and the inanities of the conversation had to be repeated in a shout into her ear. Both visits were exhausting in the extreme.
He went out one evening for a long walk. There was a spot about three miles from Cruach where the road fell down on one side in a sheer drop to the waters of a long, gloomy loch. There was a strong wooden fence along the side of the incline, and for a long time Neville leaned on the top bar staring into the black water far below. He couldn’t swim.
It began to rain—the thin, chilling rain called Scots mist. He walked back to the town with his collar upturned, soaked to the skin by the time he reached his lodgings.
5
Every morning Neville’s landlady gave him porridge, bacon and egg, hot rolls and butter and strong sweet tea. He always sat for ten minutes after the meal, reading the newspaper, while the landlady hovered about the kitchen making attempts to start conversation.
He read about international unrest, and it all seemed fabulously remote from Cruach, from this small room with its old-fashioned range and its over-abundant ornaments.
“Will the school holidays be comin’ soon, Mr. Neville?” asked the landlady.
“What? Eh? Oh yes—next week, Mrs. Duthie. Next week.”
He went on reading and sipping his tea. An acute situation in the Balkans. War in
China. Threats of war in Europe.
“Is there something organically wrong with my brain?” he wondered. “I can’t grasp this, I can’t cram it in. If I were living two hundred years from now I could master it as history, I could teach it. It would be more real than it is at the moment . . .”
He finished his tea and walked down to the school. There was a note for him in the masters’ common room. Hamden wanted to see him before school began. He put on his gown and mortar-board and made his way to the senior master’s room.
Hamden was sitting back in his swing chair when he went in. His great gnarled hands were clasped at his chin and he swung himself slightly from side to side, so that the ancient chair creaked monotonously.
“Ah, Neville, I wanted to see you. Sit down, sit down.”
He waved vaguely at a chair and Neville sat down, saying nothing, waiting resignedly for whatever it was that Hamden had to tell him. The senior master cleared his throat and picked up a pencil from the desk. Then he peered suddenly at the younger man and said:
“Look here, Neville, I’m damned sorry we’ve had—well, words this term.”
“I’d forgotten it already, Mr. Hamden,” said Neville. He was staring at the huge knobbled hands as they played with the pencil.
“Quite. Of course. What I mean is—well, it’s no dam’ good having rows. I mean—school life’s trying enough as it is. I mean—you’re young . . .”
“So are the pupils,” said Neville. It was like a dream—the graceless movements of the hands fascinated him. An acute situation in the Balkans. War in China.
“Quite so, quite so,” said Hamden in his dry way. “That is why we are helping them to grow up, Neville. Anyway, don’t let’s quarrel. I’ve no doubt your views will change.”
The conversation went on with desultory apologies on both sides. Then, in the distance, they could hear the bell for the first period. Hamden put down his pencil.
“Well, I have sixth-year boys. Let’s shake hands on it, Neville, eh?”
They shook hands and Neville went to the door.
“A holiday will do you good,” Hamden called after him. “I think you’re a bit run down—don’t look healthy. School life makes you like that, you know. I’d a devil of a time my first three or four years.”
Neville looked back at him—at his yellow, stretched face, his lank hair, his stooped, rachitic frame.
Then he went to his third-year boys and tried to interest them in Twelfth Night.
6
“Dear Herbert,—Another week of it and then, thank God! a break for two whole months. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. I have a feeling that I might go to Montrose for a fortnight or so, and then perhaps down to the border. Is there any chance of your being in Scotland? If so, let me know and we’ll try to arrange a meeting.
“Hamden made a heavy-handed attempt to smooth things over this morning. Really I wasn’t interested—he’s too fantastic altogether. A figment of my imagination—or of his own, I don’t know which. Anyway, we shook hands for what it was worth. I don’t know how we’ll get on when school resumes. Oh well, what the hell does it matter after all?”
“Did you meet Miriam Tainsh when you were here? I can’t remember. She’s quite nice—I talk to her now and again. Negative, but not disturbing. She’s grown unaccountably friendly with Mrs. Grant—I can’t think why. You couldn’t imagine two women more unlike. Well, maybe that’s the reason. Tainsh spends a lot of time round at the Grants’, at any rate. Queer: one can never forecast things.
“Don’t be surprised at anything. I feel queer these days, as if on the verge of something (can’t put it any more clearly than that). Well, maybe I only need a rest and a change. It is a bit of a job giving oneself continuously to insatiable youngsters (I wish I could even take the noble view of schoolmastering) . . .”
7
There was a boy in the third year named Elder. He was oafish and unlovable, good at nothing at all. But if there were any jokes to be played, Elder was always mixed up in them. His jokes were clumsy and pointless, but he had a reputation among his classmates nevertheless and so did his best to keep it up.
On the morning after his interview with Hamden, Neville went to the classroom where he was taking History. When he went in the boys were sitting in unusual quietness. Then he saw that someone had scribbled some fatuous verses on the blackboard. He immediately suspected Elder but said nothing and went over to the board and picked up the felt duster. He rubbed at the verses and immediately a long smear of thin liquid glue appeared on the blackboard. There was a suppressed titter from the boys. Neville stood for a minute wearily gathering patience, then he turned round with the expression of martyrdom he always assumed on such occasions. And at that moment the door opened and Hamden strode in.
He peered at Neville standing with the duster in his hand, then at the smear of glue, then he surveyed the suddenly timid boys. His thin nostrils wrinkled and the tight skin round his mouth began to twitch a little.
“Come out the boy who did that,” he quavered, pointing at the board with one of his long crooked fingers.
One or two of the boys glanced involuntarily at Elder, whose face gave no doubt at all about his guilt. Hamden’s long arm swung round until it pointed at him.
“You—Elder. Was this your doing?”
Elder said nothing, he only blushed unhappily.
“You can come and see me at the interval,” went on Hamden. Then he turned to Neville. “I wanted to see you about something but it can wait till later. Meantime I’ll send in the janitor to clear up that mess.”
He went out, and there was a little restless movement through the class. Neville went up to his desk and began the lesson in his listless, resigned way.
When the bell rang for the eleven o’clock interval, Neville went straight to Hamden’s room. The boy, Elder, had already arrived. He was standing with his hands behind his back, staring unhappily at the three-thonged strap that lay on Hamden’s desk. Hamden himself was looking through some papers. He glanced up and blinked as Neville entered.
“Well?” he asked. “Do you want to see me?”
Neville nodded brusquely.
“I want to know what you propose to do to Elder,” he said. He was speaking mechanically, with no rage, no feeling at all. But he seemed to have a set course of action, dictated by something outside himself altogether.
Hamden leaned back slowly and his chair creaked. He stretched out his arm and picked up the strap, then began passing it through his hands, twisting his gaunt fingers through the thongs. Elder seemed surprised but dumb.
“To do to Elder,” repeated Hamden slowly. “To punish him. Of course.” Then, wrinkling his nostrils: “Have you any objection?”
Neville nodded again. Now he was a little surprised at his own actions.
Hamden said nothing for a moment, then he rose slowly from his creaking chair and came round the desk.
“Come here, Elder,” he said. “Put out your hand.”
Elder glanced for a moment at Neville, then he began to move forward, stretching out his hand as he did so. Suddenly Neville advanced. He stopped Elder with a gesture, then went up to Hamden and, with a sudden effort of strength, twisted the strap out of his hand.
There was an intense silence. Hamden and Neville faced each other, the older man blinking in fury. His face was yellow, the tight skin twitched, he was trembling slightly. Then suddenly he said, in the high, querulous tone he adopted when he was moved:
“Leave the room, Elder. Leave the room, I say.”
The boy went out, scared and embarrassed. The two men continued to stare at each other, then with a sudden gesture Hamden went back to his chair and sat down heavily.
“Really, Neville, you go too far,” he said.
“Elder is one of my pupils,” said Neville in a low voice. “It’s up to me to give him any punishment he deserves. I won’t have him tortured out of all proportion to what he did. It was only an end of term joke. It doesn�
�t warrant that.”
He threw the strap down on the desk. The heavy, stiff leather uncoiled itself slowly.
“I’m responsible for all the English pupils,” said Hamden. “If you want to know, I determined to punish Elder myself because I knew you’d do nothing.”
“I would have punished him,” said Neville quietly, “but in my own way.”
“Cha!” Then Hamden suddenly raised his voice. “It’s no dam’ good. I won’t have it. I tried to talk to you yesterday, Neville. By God, if I didn’t think you were run down I’d take the whole matter to the authorities. You know dam’ fine how Dr. Christie views insubordination.”
“You can do what you like,” said Neville, shrugging.
He went out. In the corridor he saw Elder, still dazed and sheepish looking.
“You can come to my room, Elder,” he said. And there he took his own strap from his desk and gave the boy three good strokes across the palm. Then, when Elder had gone, he threw down the strap and sank into his chair. The bell rang for classes, but it was a full ten minutes before he rose and went along to the classroom.
8
That evening he called on the Tainshes. Miriam answered the door. She was startled and vague.
“Mother’s gone down to the church—it’s her mid-week service night,” she explained.
He looked round incomprehendingly at the lifeless furniture and ornaments. There were bits of old-fashioned china, some photographs (one of Miriam as a child, another of Miriam in her degree cap and gown), a screen before the fireplace with some stags painted on it in oils, and an aspidistra in an old Delft pot. A book of Haydn sonatas was open on the piano.
Neville sank wearily into a chair and leaned back on the hand-worked antimacassar.
“Oh God, I’m tired!” he said. Miriam stood flutteringly before him. He realized she was asking if he wanted a cup of tea.
“Tea? No . . . No, thank you.”
The Other Passenger Page 9