After a while Roger was able to make out a monotonous booming noise coming from a solid brick building to his left. He walked cautiously towards it in the dark. When he got to within a couple of yards of the wall he spotted an open door.
He took an extra turn of Cuchulain’s leash round his wrist and stepped inside. At the end of what looked like a long corridor he spied a thin slit of light at floor level. The booming sound appeared to be coming from the same direction.
He set off in the inky blackness with Cuchulain going in front of him.
The faint tapping of the hardened pads of his claws on the linoleum.
Roger was just stretching out to find the door at the end of the corridor when there was a patter of clapping from behind it. It opened abruptly and three men in mackintoshes with hats pulled well down came out. Roger pulled Cuchulain aside as they hurried past.
He slipped into the schoolroom unnoticed in the flurry of their departure.
It was a biggish room with as many as fifty small inkgrimed desks lined up in long rows. On one side was a large window with two of its small leaded panes blocked up with blackened rags. In front of the desks there was a very small table over which Austin Boycott and a man with a fluffy white moustache, presumably the chairman, were huddled. The chairman was busily engaged in turning his notes over and over, no doubt anxious that Boycott should not see what he was going to say about him.
Behind the table was a large blackboard almost white from much use. On it somebody had written
But soon a wonder came to light,
Which showed the rogues they lied,
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.
Roger read it and instinctively looked down at the long brownish grey back of Cuchulain, who was standing sniffing suspiciously at the smell of chalk dust and sour ink in the damp air.
Roger looked round the room.
Sitting scattered among the fifty desks there were five men and a woman. The only one of them who looked at all comfortable was George Wyndham. He was sitting lost in the exalted state to which any form of public meeting roused him.
Roger sat down quickly in the seat nearest the door. He tapped Cuchulain on the shoulder and the big wolfhound sank obediently down at his feet. He slipped off his leash and stuffed it in his pocket.
In a moment he understood why there was no great air of enthusiasm about the meeting. The seats were cruelly narrow and the bottom edge of the desks came very close to them cutting remorselessly into the flesh of the thighs.
The chairman put his hand up to his fluffy white moustache and coughed twice. The audience stirred in expectation. The chairman rose.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I am sure you would all wish me to thank our distinguished visitor, Mr Boycott, for his address to us tonight. While many of us might not agree with his entire – er – disparagement of any form of – er – loyalty, I think we would all –’
He paused and looked proudly round at them.
‘… I think we would all defend to the last his right to – ahem – disparage.’
The woman member of the audience, who was wearing green tweeds and a cocked hat with a stubby brown feather in it, murmured, ‘Hear, hear.’
The chairman bobbed a sharp little bow at her across the ink-stained desks.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘I have no doubt there are many, many questions you would wish to ask Mr Boycott before I declare the meeting – ah – over.’
Austin Boycott modestly bowed his head and contemplated the little rickety table. The chairman turned his notes quickly over once more.
There was a long silence.
The chairman, who had sat down with an air of having finished a task well done, rose to his feet again. He sent a propitiatory smile out across the barren desks towards the woman in the green tweeds.
‘I’m sure Miss Martin has something …’
Miss Martin got to her feet with a rolling motion as if her craft had just headed into a tidy bit of breeze.
‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘there was something. It’s not perhaps strictly connected with this notion of loyalty being something – well, something bad, which Mr Boycott has been putting before us tonight. But it’s a thing I’ve been wanting to ask him for a long time. And this is it: does he really agree with exporting suffering horses to meet their deaths in agony in the abattoirs of the Continent?’
Chapter Seventeen
Austin Boycott popped to his feet. His shock of white hair seemed to bristle even higher. His narrow red T-shaped face took on a yet deeper hue.
But whatever fiery reply he was about to direct at Miss Martin was nipped in the bud by George Wyndham. At the mention of suffering horses he had manifested signs of considerable excitement, and as soon as the question had been put he rose to his feet holding his right hand high above his head.
‘Mr Chairman, Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘may I be permitted to speak?’
The chairman blinked at him. After many and many an evening trying to wheedle people into oratory this was a request that must be savoured.
‘Mr Chairman,’ Wyndham said, ‘I have been deterred from putting any of the many questions that have occurred to me while listening to this really extraordinarily interesting meeting by the fact that I am not a member of this particular society – though I shall certainly join at the first possible opportunity – but now that the matter of the export of horses has come up, I feel I cannot sit in silence without informing you that I am an accredited member of the Home Counties Society for the Abolition of Trading in Horses.’
He pulled a bulging wallet from the inner pocket of the familiar striped blue jacket and began to sort through the wad of membership cards it contained.
He was watched in silence by the other people at the meeting. Even Austin Boycott, though still remaining standing, was for the moment nonplussed.
Wyndham abandoned his search.
‘Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘I should like on behalf of my committee to bring you fraternal greetings on this auspicious occasion.’
He sat down.
Miss Martin began to clap. Softly, with gloved hands.
Austin Boycott banged his fist down on the tiny rickety table. It gave a sharp groan of protest.
‘Auspicious occasion,’ he boomed.
A noble stream of contempt rolling forward across the rows of battered little desks.
‘Oh, Mr Chairman, this occasion has been far, far from auspicious. I put before you a panacea for the tortured constrictions of this age. I urge you to cut through the tangle of hypocrisy that strangles every impulse for good in society today. I warn you that unless the debilitating notion of subservient loyalty to established forms and conventions is jettisoned lock, stock and barrel this country will never see an inch of advance in any field whatsoever. And what happens? Some wretched female, who ought to be publicly hanged as an example to her sisters, bleats to me about horses. Horses.’
He slumped back in his chair. Miss Martin slowly sank further into the rigorous embrace of her desk seat.
Austin Boycott gave her an apple sweet smile.
George Wyndham remained standing.
‘Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘I feel it my duty clearly to indicate the views of the Home Counties Society for the Abolition of Trading in Horses on the statement we have just heard. Sir, I must retire from the meeting in protest.’
He buttoned the striped blue jacket firmly across his chest till the bulging books in the pockets stretched the stitching to its utmost. He settled his implacably circular hornrims decidedly on the bridge of his nose. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Once.
He marched out.
The chairman rubbed his hands together. The clash of intellectual debate.
The unexpected drama seemed to stimulate the remaining members of the audience to unheard of articulateness. They found a positive stream of questions to put to Austin Boycott. Each one was answered at length and with relish.
It was a full ha
lf hour later that at last silence settled on the big schoolroom like a layer of chalk dust.
The chairman rose eight inches out of his chair.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘if that is the last question …’
‘Mr Chairman,’ Roger said from his seat at the very back of the room.
The chairman pulled a hunter watch from his waistcoat pocket.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘just time for a quick supplementary, I think.’
‘Thank you,’ Roger said. ‘Then I should like to ask Mr Boycott this.’
At this point Austin Boycott recognized him. He bobbed his white shock of hair forward in a bow of greeting and smiled with sweetness.
‘I should like to ask,’ Roger went on, ‘whether Mr Boycott carries his distrust of loyalty even to the point of advocating the refusal of loyalty to an employer paying just wages?’
Austin Boycott got to his feet. He smiled across at Roger.
‘Yes,’ he boomed, ‘that is something I might well have dealt with.’
He swept a ferocious glare round the other members of his audience.
‘I hope you noticed the blatant assumptions lying hidden in the question,’ he said. ‘The putrid implication that there is some virtue in returning a due quantity of sweat in exchange for a due quantity of pelf. With – and notice this – the mandarins of society striking the terms of the bargain. No, sir, certainly there should be no loyalty to an employer’s grudging disbursements. Let us unite to strip away the unctuous cream spread to conceal the iron realities of commercial exploitation.’
He looked round the big dank room.
The audience looked back.
Roger decided that the time had come to move forward nearer Boycott to a place from which questions could not be avoided. He left his cramped seat and sauntered towards the front of the room. Cuchulain, he saw, was happily asleep on the chalky floorboards.
‘So you would advocate no loyalty to any employer whatsoever?’ he said mildly.
‘Certainly, not while society is in its present state of regressive torpor. No loyalty to any sum from any employer.’
‘You find you can carry out such a policy?’
For an instant Austin Boycott paused. Doubt how the matter had moved from the safely general to the personal.
Then he tossed back the shock of white hair and answered.
‘I carry out the policy to the last jot,’ he boomed. ‘I would scorn to do otherwise.’
Roger sat on top of one of the front row desks.
‘You have been a schoolmaster, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Did you keep to your principles then?’
Austin Boycott smiled. He rubbed his tiny hands together briskly. Warming to the work.
‘Of course I did. Do you think that I would take their filthy money and loyally instil into the heads of poor innocent children the perverted doctrines that the established ones of the land wished to use to bolster up their rotten world? No, sir, I told them the truth of things. I did my best to corrupt their infant minds. And I’m proud of it.’
‘And the War Office,’ said Roger, ‘do you give them loyal service today?’
The elfin form of the barrel-chested agitator shook. A sudden cold wave hitting him and passing on.
He opened his mouth and gasped.
The moment of truth at last?
And from behind Roger there came the noise of feet trampling urgently down the dark corridor leading to the schoolroom. A confused sound of voices sharply demanding to know the right way. An invasion.
Everybody turned to see what was happening.
‘In here,’ came a voice.
Curt imperiousness.
Roger felt a wave of peevish irritation at such an interruption at the crucial moment. He guessed what had happened. Boycott in his speech must have dished out some remark or other insulting to the Church. No doubt the men in such a hurry to leave at the moment the speech was over had gone to gather a posse, perhaps even the Guards, to deal with a blasphemer.
Roger could not have been more wrong.
The first of the invaders to enter the schoolroom with brusque absence of ceremony was the Bosun. Draped in his startling black and white check topcoat and flourishing his ornate stick.
At his heels were Collins, white-faced as ever under the dome of oiled black hair, and the towering all-black figure of the pillar of respectability.
And in an instant Roger saw what must have happened. Etain had told the Bosun where to find him in a place where he could be seized with impunity.
The careless hand flips round the bulb of the hourglass. The utter reversal.
The caricature face suddenly seen from the other way up, the smile a frown. The optical illusion.
There could be no other explanation. Only Etain had known that he was going out to this obscure school to listen to Austin Boycott addressing an obscure society. He had completely thrown off the Bosun’s pursuit. There could be no doubt about that. He had kept a sharp eye out at the flat and at the bus stop. There had been no watcher. He had taken the additional precaution of sitting in the back of the bus and it was perfectly clear that no other vehicle had followed its route. As a final check he had looked well behind him in the darkness as he approached the school. He had not been followed. So the Bosun had been tipped off by Etain.
He could hardly accustom himself to the thought. He had at last put his complete trust in her. Now white was black. He had to keep reminding himself of it.
He continued to lean against the front row desk where he had been putting his final question to Austin Boycott. He made no effort to get away.
In any case flight was out of the question. There was only one door to the room and the Bosun, Collins and the pillar of respectability stood at it in a solid immovable block. The window was set high in the wall and opened only at the top by means of cords and pulleys. He was cornered.
The chairman looked at this sudden influx to his meeting with patently mixed feelings. That it added fifty per cent to the size of the audience could not be denied. On the other hand the occasion had been a moderate success already. Trouble of any sort now would be highly regrettable.
And one thing was plain about the Bosun and his companions. They were out to make trouble.
Roger turned and faced them. This could not be the end. Not when the Infiltraitor had at last beyond doubt betrayed herself. If he could only get away he would snatch victory from defeat. Etain Bloom would see England sooner than she had bargained for.
He noticed that the Bosun seemed to have given up his dislike of meeting Austin Boycott. He was standing at the door looking at him with an expression of glee on his inflated balloon face.
It was enough to tell Roger that any idea of getting out of the room by keeping close to Boycott was not going to work. The Bosun must be prepared to risk any possible embarrassment in order to get hold of him as he had not been earlier on when he had apparently fled from his post outside the School at the sight of his former mentor.
The chairman realized at last the need for something to be said. The silence was growing difficult for everybody, except the intruders.
He coughed.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think that concludes our little meeting.’
He looked at the Bosun. The Bosun glared back.
‘I’m sorry to see,’ the chaiman went on, ‘that some – er –, gentlemen seem to have arrived at the very moment that we were – ahem – terminating. But time and – er – tide wait for no man. I will just content myself with pointing out that our next meeting is at this same venue at the same time a fortnight today, that is at five o’clock – ahem – sharp.’
‘Just one moment, Mr Chairman.’
The Bosun’s insolent piping.
‘Just one moment. Are you going to be able to provide us with the distinguished Austin Boycott at your next meeting? That’s the point, you know.’
The chairman coughed. Apologetically.
‘Well – er – not exactly,’ he said.
The Bosun pounced.
‘Not exactly? He’s to be here and not here, is that it? Or what?’
‘Well, no. No, Mr Boycott will not be here. However, although I have not quite completed the – ahem – arrangements, you can be sure that a speaker of some eminence will – er – be here.’
‘But not Mr Boycott?’
‘No, not Mr Boycott.’
‘Well, that’s a great pity. Because you see I came all the way out here just to put a few questions to Mr Boycott. No doubt he has been talking to you about his distinguished ancestor –’
‘Distinguished?’
Austin Boycott’s infuriated boom.
‘Let me tell you, Professor Bosenwite, that the Charles Boycott from whom I am unhappy enough to be descended was as nasty a villain as you’ll find in all Irish history.’
‘Yes,’ said the Bosun happily, ‘I thought our views on the estimable gentleman might diverge.’
He pointed his ornate stick at Boycott as if it was a gun.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did you know that Charles Boycott, far from being forced out of his agent’s post by the action of the local tenants, was simply promoted by his employer, Lord Erne, to a superior position?’
‘Nonsense,’ thundered Austin Boycott. ‘Even if you could prove that it happened at all, it would only have been a piece of blatant face-saving.’
The Bosun took a step forward into the room. A look of shining triumph on his puffy face.
‘But the arrangement had been made a clear six months before the tenants took their action,’ he said.
Roger leapt from his place and ran head down towards the small gap left by the Bosun when he had stepped forward to make his point.
But the Bosun was not so easy to outmanoeuvre. He turned calmly round and shoved Roger gently into the arms of the man in the long coat.
A grip like a black steel claw.
Roger twisted round and saw the Bosun’s face lit up by a little smirking grin.
‘Why, Mr Farrar,’ the Bosun said, ‘what an unexpected surprise. Come over to this corner and we’ll have an undisturbed chat.’
He led the way to the far corner of the room where a battered wire wastepaper basket leant drunkenly on its side. The man in the black coat marched Roger across after him. Collins followed, looking sharply up into the faces of the members of Austin Boycott’s audience.
The Dog It Was That Died Page 17