Raising Arcadia

by Simon Chesterman

  Another suspicious glance at her. “My point is that how we frame these questions can sometimes determine how we answer them. Let me illustrate this by a final example — building on Miss Greentree’s desire to find the villain who tied the five victims to the railway track in the first place. So now let us assume we know that the fat man is, in fact, the villain. The trolley, once again, is hurtling along towards the five helpless individuals. Who would push this fat villain into the path of his own instrument of murder?”

  All the hands go up. All except one. The teacher is considering pretending not to see her, but she politely clears her throat.

  “Yes, Miss Greentree? Everyone would happily give this miscreant his just desserts. Why are you suddenly so merciful?”

  Her eyes move from the teacher to the round figure on the whiteboard, standing on the edge of the bridge. “Because if we push him in front of the trolley, we may stop his crime — but we would never know why he did it.”

  The school bell rings to signal the end of the class, barely covering Mr. Ormiston’s whispered “Thank God,” before he ushers the students out.

  “Well?”

  As the class moves through the cloisters towards the school gymnasium, she matches step with Henry.

  “Well what?” Henry looks straight ahead, again doing a bad job of hiding something.

  “Well, what were you running away from? What did Headmaster say to you on Friday?”

  Henry quickens his step to move away. “Not here, not now. You know that the walls have ears, Arcadia.”

  She allows him to leave. Not only ears but eyes, of course. A glance and a smile at the black hemisphere fixed in the ceiling of the corridor. Behind the darkened glass is a camera, silently observing its surroundings. Most of the classrooms and thoroughfares have them. After the weekend’s excitement their coverage will almost certainly be extended further across the open areas of the Priory School.

  The school has been her home during weekdays since she started as a yearling at the age of thirteen. She was taught the idiosyncratic argot of her English public school the day she arrived: first year students were referred to as “yearlings”, second year was called “remove”, third year was in fact “fifth form”, while the sixth form actually took up years four and five and completed secondary school with the taking of A-levels.

  Established by the Church of England almost two centuries ago, the Priory School was until recently one of only four English public schools that remained boys-only and boarding-only. Three years ago, she was part of the first intake of girls to join the school — a decision that remains a point of controversy with some of the older alumni.

  Today five hundred students live on campus, most of them for the entire school term. Only a few whose parents live in the vicinity are allowed to board on a weekly basis, as she does. The majority of the students are still male and some of the traditions — and not a few of the teachers — are taking time to adapt to the presence of women on campus who are not there to cook or clean.

  The Priory School’s motto is “Ipsa scientia potestas est” — knowledge itself is power — yet it can hardly be described as rigorously academic. The Board somehow obtained an exemption for its students to go straight on to A-levels without completing the earlier GCSE exams, but this seems more testimony to influence than intellect. The guiding principle appears to be that the world is to be run by well-rounded young men who play rugby in winter and cricket in summer and know their way around a church service.

  The teachers are well-intentioned enough. Mr. Ormiston, form teacher for this, her fifth form year, can be tiresome but is genuinely keen to get the most out of his class. He is strict — imposing a discipline clearly inflicted on him as a young man at his own boarding school — but does not take undue pleasure in the discomfort of his charges.

  Some of the other teachers, by contrast, exhibit tendencies towards sadism that have been expunged by most of the world outside the English public school system. Caning is technically forbidden — indeed, it has been illegal in England for almost two decades — but in practice is still used by a small number of teachers. More than once, she has seen the science teacher, Mr. Pratt, flushed and with beads of perspiration surely not occasioned by the physical exertion of whacking a teenager with a light piece of rattan.

  She herself has been the recipient of such discipline on only one occasion. In an exceptionally tedious science class, the aptly named Mr. Pratt was going on and on about the solar system and so she took out a crime novel to keep her mind occupied. The science teacher took this as some kind of personal insult and stopped next to her desk.

  “Miss Greentree, would you do us the honour of recalling the names of the planets?”

  She put down the novel. “Five Roman gods and one goddess, a Greek god, and the Germanic word for ‘dirt’. Or something like that.”

  Mr. Pratt clapped twice, slowly. “Very funny, Miss Greentree — though as you can see I am not laughing. I am aware of your disinterest in this field, but unfortunately you do not set the science curriculum.”

  “I’m not disinterested, sir, I am uninterested. Disinterest would suggest that I am impartial or fair-minded about the matter. Uninterested makes it clear that I do not care to know more about it.”

  Any unhappiness about the criticism of his word choice was overshadowed by incredulity at the sentiment. “But this is the physical universe — it is our very existence.”

  “Perhaps. But the brain has a limited capacity for storing information and I fail to see how any of this is relevant. In our lifetime it is inconceivable that anyone will do more than scrape the surface of any of these planets. Their movement will have no more impact on me than the horoscope that you read over lunch sitting by yourself in the staff lounge will have on your own life. So I prefer to keep space for subjects that are more likely to be of some practical application.”

  She sensed the teacher’s rising blood pressure, but could not resist adding: “I for one intend to forget all of this as soon as the class is finished.”

  “Well let’s see if we can’t help you remember it,” Mr. Pratt said, licking his lips. “Five strokes of the cane, Miss Greentree. For insolence.”

  She moved to the front of the class as he took out the cane. “Hold out your hands, please,” he said.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to be punished in the same way as the boys. Women’s liberation and all that, you know.”

  His eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “Very well.”

  The pain of the beating was intense but transitory. Having seen the routine before, she stood facing the board in front of the class, determined not to make a sound. She slowed her breathing and relaxed her body, allowing the blows from the rattan to sway her gently like a sapling. The absence of a reaction seemed to further rile her teacher, as there was an escalation in the force of the third and fourth hits — apparent even through the numbed flesh of her buttocks. The cardboard that she had placed in her rear pockets prior to the class as a precaution absorbed much of the impact, but she was still going to have bruising there tomorrow. The odour of Mr. Pratt’s sweat mixed with stale cigarette smoke — Lucky Strike? — wafted across her. She could hear the teacher’s breathing deepen as he raised the cane above his left shoulder for a final strike.

  “Is everything under control, Mr. Pratt?” A quiet but authoritative voice from the doorway.

  The distraction caused the teacher to slow his swing and the last blow was by far the lightest. Mr. Pratt turned to face the white-haired gentleman at the door, who gave a good impression of having popped in on his way somewhere else — though the classroom was the last door at the end of a hallway, and therefore not on the way to any other part of the school.

  “Yes, of course, Headmaster,” Mr. Pratt replied, trying to get his own breathing back under control.

  “Very good, Mr. Pratt.” Headmaster nodded to her: “Good afternoon, Miss Greentree.” The door closed and he was gone.r />
  That is one of the few times that she has seen Headmaster outside assembly. Though he has run the Priory School for as long as she has been attending, Headmaster remains a presence more felt than observed. Even now, as at today’s assembly, his interactions with the students are limited to the formal — welcomes to students and parents, set speeches at school events, and missives sent through the school newsletter. He teaches no classes and holds no office hours.

  Over the years, she has amassed basic information about his background. Despite the lack of a chin, he is not of particularly noble birth. He grew up in and around London, his father having some position of significance in a newspaper — retiring before that industry’s death spiral began. An Oxford education led to two decades teaching at the nearby public school Radley College. An unusual move, it might be thought, for someone who once showed promise in scientific research. But it sowed the seeds for a career in secondary school education. In that sense, Radley was a good choice as it had a prominent name and good connections.

  In time, he appeared to gravitate towards administration and fundraising, rising to the position of Sub-Warden at Radley. After a few years as number two, he applied to the Priory School and was appointed Headmaster by the school board about a year before Magnus first enrolled.

  In the ensuing decade, he sought to insulate the school from the obsessive testing that has come to dominate much of education elsewhere in the country. On its face, the Priory School aspires to cultivate confidence and positive values in its boys. This is reinforced through sport and culture. The decision to extend that education to girls had been justified in part by the expansion of opportunities for women, but also because their inclusion would offer a more diverse environment the better to foster the moral development of its men.

  Yet beneath the façade of holistic education lies an elaborate system of monitoring. It is subtle, to be sure, but just as the black hemispheres hide cameras and microphones, the absence of tests does not mean the lack of assessment.

  The file that Mr. Ormiston produced last Friday, when her parents were called in, is one example. The full extent of that monitoring is unclear, but it is a safe assumption that extensive data is kept on all the students. Odd, then, that something like Henry’s disappearance could not have been predicted.

  None of this, in any case, has diminished the Priory School’s attractiveness to the great and the good. Though not mentioned in the school’s promotional literature, the fact that various members of the British Royal Family once slept in its dormitories is partial explanation for the length of its waiting list.

  Within the school, there continues to be speculation as to which beds were previously occupied by two of the current heirs to the throne. Based on proximity to fire escapes and evidence of subsequent renovations to remove doors to adjoining facilities for bodyguards, the answer appears fairly clear: rooms on the second and third floor of the dormitory building, respectively.

  Given such august company, it was sheer chance that Magnus was admitted. Their parents had neither the connections nor the money that were tickets of entry for most of the boys at that time. Instead it was an accidental encounter when Headmaster himself went to Father’s clinic for a routine check-up. The fact that a boy had withdrawn close to the start of term came up in polite conversation and Father mentioned that his eldest son, Magnus, was about to start at a state-funded comprehensive school. A few days and telephone calls later, Magnus was called in for an interview; soon afterwards he was offered a full scholarship. Seven years later, the school had announced that it would take in its first cohort of girls and she followed in Magnus’s footsteps — though, as the latter never tires of mentioning, the younger Greentree received only a half-scholarship.

  Her interview for admission to the Priory School remains the longest conversation she has had with Headmaster. Even then his luxurious mane of hair was completely white, trimmed as always just above the collar of his customary dark suit.

  At a little over six feet, Headmaster was a physically imposing presence. But what struck her most on that first occasion was that he spoke to her as he would to an adult. There were no games, no pretences — though in retrospect that was, presumably, precisely the game he was playing. At the time it was refreshing.

  “Why are you here?” Headmaster said, barely looking up from his papers as she and her parents were ushered into his office overlooking the grassy quadrangle. He sat at a large oak desk, his back to the window. The desk was empty except for a lamp, a stack of papers, a golden letter opener that resembled a small sword, and a black cloth that had been draped over three small boxes.

  It was immediately clear who should respond. “I would like to come to your school.”

  “Why?” He signed two documents with the fountain pen, an indulgent swirl of a signature with his left hand as his right moved the papers into a drawer, and opened another file.

  She paused. “You have a laboratory. My brother told me that science classes actually do experiments. Most of the other schools just use books in science. Your library is also better than many schools — though not as good, obviously, as the British Library in London.”

  “Obviously.” Still pretending to attend to his files.

  “And the teachers here are better educated and, by the look of the cars in your parking lot, better paid than the average.”

  A flicker of the lip, almost a smile. Headmaster now looked up at her: “Not that well paid. But tell me: why should I let you into our school? This school produces leaders of men: generals, prime ministers. Kings. What makes you think you belong here?”

  “Not all of your boys become generals or prime ministers. And the ones who become kings don’t have much say in the matter. You need the occasional student like me here so that the others can say that they met someone whose parents had a trade.” This was not a kind way to describe Father’s medical career, but from what Magnus had told her it was an honest description of the school’s demographics. “And now that you’ve decided to admit girls, you want to ensure that the first batch aren’t so dim that they bring down your ranking in the league tables.”

  This earned her another twitch of Headmaster’s lip. “But I forget myself. Do please sit down.” He pointed vaguely to the single seat on the other side of his desk. She sat. Mother and Father looked about, then settled into a pair of chairs by the door of the office.

  “Here at the Priory School we don’t believe in standardised testing. Instead we seek to draw out the very best in each boy — and girl — helping them achieve their potential. I believe that every child is like a candle: our job is to provide the spark and see how brightly he or she can shine. For today, I have only one question that I would like to put to you, to see how your mind works. That will help me determine whether you are right for our school, and whether we are right for you. Are you ready?”

  The preliminary question was rhetorical.

  Headmaster lifted up the black cloth on his desk, revealing three cubes, each about two inches wide, deep, and high. One was painted red, one yellow, the other blue. Apart from the colour there was nothing to distinguish them. Wooden, made by hand, painted several coats with a thick brush, they were probably made for this game.

  “What is underneath them?” she asked.

  “Good, you are observant. Yes, these are hollow cubes with the open side face down on the desk. If I tell you that under one of them is a boiled sweet, which one would you pick? Choose it, but please do not touch it.”

  An unusual test. Not looking for colour-blindness or one cube would be green. Boys her age tended to like the colour red: did the school desire conformity or individuality? But clearly something more was going on here. This was not the test. That would come later. Hence it did not particularly matter what she chose.

  “Yellow,” she said without hesitation.

  “Very well,” Headmaster said. He reached over and lifted the blue cube carefully, showing her that it was empty and setting it to one si
de. “So we know now that there was nothing under the blue cube. And here is the question on which much will depend: If I tell you that the boiled sweet is in fact under one of the remaining two cubes, will you change your selection? You have chosen yellow. Would you now like to change to red?”

  A game of chance, but something more than that. She ran through the combinations in her head — red, yellow, blue. An interesting problem in theory, but to do it in practice required more than luck. It required skill.

  “No thank you, I am happy with my choice.”

  A slight contraction of the eyebrows: Headmaster was disappointed. “That’s a common response, but I confess that I expected more from you. Though the mathematics is clearly beyond the normal thirteen-year-old, I thought you might have worked it out intuitively.

  “Let me explain. There are three cubes and three possibilities: the sweet could be under the red, or the yellow, or the blue cube. So you had a one in three chance of choosing the right cube at the start. You chose the yellow cube, and so there is a one in three chance you were correct. In that case, switching cubes would be a mistake. But if the sweet was in fact under the red cube, you were wrong. I have now taken away the blue cube, however. If you switch to the remaining cube, then you would have won. Similarly, if the sweet was under the blue cube, you were wrong again — but in that case I would have to remove the red cube, and you would win again by switching. So in two of the possible three scenarios, you are better off switching from your original choice.

  “I can make it clearer. Imagine that there are not three but three hundred cubes. You choose one, I then remove two hundred and ninety-eight other cubes, leaving the one you chose and one other. The sweet is under one of the two cubes. Would you really not switch?”

  Throughout this, she had kept her eyes on the red and yellow cubes. “I thank you for the explanation,” she said. “But my task was to determine under which cube the boiled sweet is in fact to be found. I chose the yellow cube, but as it happens I am not especially partial to boiled sweets. Mother says they are bad for my teeth. We can still solve this puzzle, however, if I lift up the other cube.” She swiftly reached over and lifted up the red cube, which was also empty.