‘Their one really impregnable point of vantage,’ said Philip, ‘is that they provide school-fodder. If they gave up supplying boys, we should have no jobs. Therefore the breed, for good or bad, must be encouraged. We can’t do without them. Anyway, thank God, the birth-rate is going down, so perhaps there won’t be masters, parents, or boys at all in a few hundred years.’
‘Speaking as one who is not a parent, and barely a schoolmaster,’ said Colin, ‘your side doesn’t do badly. I mean the holidays get longer, the fees get larger, you get rid of your boys on odd pretexts like Jubilees and pocket the price of their board. If parents had any solidarity, they’d strike. At least, that’s what my father thinks.’
‘Yes, but they haven’t,’ said Mr Carter, ‘and for why? One of the strongest primal impulses known to humanity is to get away from, or get rid of, its offspring. Every new child is another shattering blow to its parents’ privacy and independence. They will pay pretty well anything to get rid of their children for long periods in every year. The older the child the more the parents will pay. And never will they combine against the benevolent institutions that take their dear children off their hands.’
‘If we could afford it,’ said Philip morosely, ‘we’d pay as much to get rid of their children as they do to foist them upon us. If I had a few hundred a year to play with I’d willingly pay the fathers of one or two of my young charges to take them back again.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Mr Carter reflectively, ‘that more schoolmasters are parents than parents are schoolmasters.’
‘It sounds awfully true,’ said Colin after a moment’s reflection, ‘but it must be wrong.’
‘I can’t explain it,’ said Mr Carter, ‘but it’s right. Put it this way. You and I, Keith, are, as far as we know, without wives or children, but at any moment either or both may burst on us. As Philip is engaged, I exclude him from this interesting conversation. Here we are, care-free bachelors in the conventional phrase, but tomorrow either of us may marry the matron or any of the housemaids. Parents, on the other hand, are practically assured that they will not suddenly turn into schoolmasters between Monday and Wednesday. They win!’
‘It sounds as if you didn’t think too well of schoolmastering,’ said Colin.
‘I don’t,’ said Mr Carter. ‘It’s awful to belong to a profession that marks you. One laughs at clergymen on holiday, trying to be natural. Have you ever seen schoolmasters on holiday? You can’t mistake them. Have you ever been on a Hellenic cruise?’
‘God!’ said Philip.
‘Or else,’ said Colin, warming to the sport, ‘they are quite the gentlemanly young Communist and marry the daughters of headmasters and have large families of girls.’
‘That’s the kind of joke schoolboys might appreciate,’ said Philip. ‘Try it on the Mixed Fifth.’
He glared at Colin and went out of the room, whistling rudely.
‘That’s the Red Flag he is trying to whistle,’ said Mr Carter. ‘It’s the kind of tune that hasn’t got any tune, but they think it has.’
‘I’d absolutely forgotten that he was engaged to Miss Birkett,’ said Colin miserably. ‘I have put my foot in it. I’m most awfully sorry.’
‘Yes, it’s not bad for your first evening,’ said Mr Carter.
3
Supper with the Head
Why the excellent and intelligent Birketts had produced an elder daughter who was a perfect sparrow-wit was a question freely discussed by the school, but no one had found an answer. Mrs Birkett felt a little rebellious against Fate. She had thought of a pretty and useful daughter who would help her to entertain parents and visitors, perhaps play the cello, or write a book, collect materials for Mr Birkett’s projected History of Southbridge School, and marry at about twenty-five a successful professional man in London. Fate had not gone wholeheartedly into the matter. Rose was as pretty as she could be, but there Fate had broken down. Rose was frankly bored by parents and visitors, and always managed to escape when they arrived. She did play an instrument, but far from being a cello it was a piano-accordion, which she handled with a good deal of confidence, but poor technique. As for writing, she was always dashing off letters in a large illegible calligraphy to bosom friends, but her vocabulary was small and her spelling shaky. She was very lazy and was perfectly happy for hours doing her nails, or altering a dress. When she came back from Munich, Philip Winter had fallen so suddenly and hopelessly in love that he had to propose to her almost before her trunks were unpacked. Rose had accepted his proposal gracefully, said it would be perfectly marvellous, and wrote to tell her bosom friends about it, spelling her affianced’s Christian name with two Ls.
Mr Birkett was more concerned for his assistant master than for his daughter, and said as much to the ardent suitor. Philip replied that no one had ever properly understood Rose.
‘I dare say not,’ said the harassed father. ‘I don’t understand her myself, and I don’t suppose you do. But it is always awkward when a junior master is engaged to the Head’s daughter, in fact I’m almost sure it’s forbidden in Leviticus. I won’t have the school work upset by it, and as Rose is barely eighteen I’m not going to let her marry yet. Forgive my being brutal, Philip, but Rose is a very silly girl, and not good enough for you.’
‘I dare say not,’ said Philip, ‘but she happens to be exactly what I want. I could always resign my post here if it complicates things, but I can promise that I’ll keep up to the mark as far as work goes. I don’t want to give up the job because I like it on the whole extremely, but I’ll have some money when my old aunt dies, and I’ve been thinking of putting some of my capital into a small prep school.’
‘Really,’ said Mr Birkett.
‘But I haven’t decided,’ Philip continued, ‘whether it would be a crank school or an anti-crank school. I believe anti-crank would pay better now. Parents, even crank ones, are a bit sick of their children not washing behind the ears. I’ll have a pure fascist, regimented school. After all, the boys are much more likely to react to the left if they are taught imperialism at school. How soon would you allow Rose to marry me, sir?’
Mr Birkett made the very daring reply that if Rose still wished the marriage to take place he would allow it in the following spring. Philip, while violently deprecating the possibility that Rose’s interest in him might wane, agreed to Mr Birkett’s conditions.
‘You can come to Sunday supper whenever you like,’ said the headmaster, ‘and take Rose out on Saturday afternoons when you aren’t on duty. Otherwise I’ll have to treat you just as if you weren’t engaged.’
Philip, panting with first love, found these restrictions almost more than he could bear and proposed a romantic elopement to his love. Rose said it would be too marvellous, but on reflection objected because she wanted a real wedding, with her mother’s veil, the school chapel, her six bosom friends for bridesmaids, and the little daughters of the drawing-master to scatter flowers. Also, she said, Philip would look marvellous in a top hat.
After this rebuff Philip told Rose all about his past life, his political views, his hopes, fears and ambitions and especially the prep school. Rose thought a prep school would be marvellous, but wished Philip would get a job. On being pressed as to her idea of a job, she said she didn’t know, but perhaps something in the films. Then school had broken up for the Easter holidays and Rose had gone on a cruise to Algiers with her parents. During her absence she sent several picture postcards to her beloved, each bearing the message ‘Marvellous view here love from Rose’, on which meagre fare Philip, working at a little book on Horace, had to content himself. He kept his word to Mr Birkett about sticking to his work, and except for a considerable amount of irritability no one would have known that he was a happy accepted lover.
Towards the end of the Easter holidays Mr Birkett had interviewed Colin Keith and, as we have already heard, inquired anxiously whether he was engaged. In Mr Birkett’s view assistant masters ought to reserve their interest in the other
sex for the holidays. He himself had wooed his Amy at Easter, won her at Whitsun, and got married at the beginning of the summer holidays, spending part of the honeymoon at Leeds, where there was an Assistant Masters’ Conference, after which he was ready to take up the headmastership of the preparatory school to which he had lately been promoted. After suitable intervals Rose had been born at the beginning of the Easter holidays and Geraldine at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, so that the school had been as little inconvenienced as possible. Why all other masters couldn’t do the same, Mr Birkett failed to understand, and on hearing that Colin had no commitments he felt a distinct relief, in spite of the thinness of his neck.
Then term began. Rose, finding life a little dull after the close attention of six ship’s officers and seven ineligible young men on the Algerian cruise, began to look about her. Mrs Birkett asked Colin to Sunday supper the first week, because he was new, and Rose, in cornflower blue, gave a good piece of exhibitionism for his benefit, refusing food at table and performing on the piano-accordion afterwards. Colin disliked her on the whole and got away as early as possible to his room and the comfortable Lemon. Rose, who never noticed anything unless it suited her, informed her parents and her betrothed that Colin was quite marvellous and took to waylaying him in the school quad, to the great interest of some four hundred boys and all the assistant masters except the two chiefly concerned.
Apart from this the first weeks of term slipped away comfortably enough. With a little help from Mr Carter Colin found he could deal quite well with the Mixed Fifth. Swan and Morland set a very gentlemanly tone in the class. Those who felt like working read a surprising number of books and wrote a great many essays. Those who did not feel like working sat in the desks at the back and amused themselves quietly. Colin discovered that he really knew a good deal more about most things than the self-possessed young gentlemen of sixteen and seventeen under his care, and even convicted them on various occasions of crass ignorance. Messrs Swan and Morland, who had made all learning their province, acknowledged a superior, and took credit for the discovery among their contemporaries, especially with Hacker, whose chameleon had thriven on dead flies.
In the summer term the school spent a good deal of its time in or on the river which flowed past the playing fields. The bathing-sheds were on a delightful backwater, and there Swan and Morland, who both hated cricket, would come after school and practise life-saving, or a few fancy strokes, or do a little easy boating.
‘Mr Winter and Mr Keith are not fulfilling their early promise,’ said Morland to Swan, as they were lazing about in a rickety canoe among the rushes on Saturday afternoon.
‘I know, I know. But the Ides of March have not yet gone. Have you noticed our Rose?’
‘Not if I could help it,’ said Morland.
‘She is hounding down Mr Keith,’ said Swan. ‘Mr Winter hasn’t jumped to it yet, nor has Mr Keith. When they do, flies on the window-pane won’t be in it.’
‘Masters are incredibly dense about life,’ said Morland. ‘I sometimes think I ought to warn Mr Keith.’
‘I always think you oughtn’t,’ said Swan. ‘They’ve got to learn it for themselves. Let’s be an ice-breaker.’
With cries of mutual encouragement they began to push the canoe through the thickest of the rushes, hearing in the noise that their canoe made while forging its way ahead, the grinding and cracking of the ice in the St Lawrence, when the first ice-breaker comes up the river. Suddenly Morland gave a yell.
‘Look out, Eric,’ he called from the prow where he was kneeling, ‘here’s one of your uncles or aunts coming at us.’
A swan’s angry face was thrust through the rushes at them followed by a furious hiss.
‘He’s not my uncle, he’s my grandfather,’ said Swan indignantly, ‘and he says he’s cutting me out of his will unless we go at once. Back her, Tony.’
‘I’m not frightened of any grandfather of yours,’ said Morland, as they quickly backed the canoe into open water again, ‘but after all an English swan’s house is his own castle. I say, Eric, let’s take a boat up the river for Whitsun. We can take camping things and sleep in a tent. It’ll be very uncomfortable, but my mother is in America, so I might as well do something dashing.’
‘We might,’ said Swan. ‘My people are going to a golfing hotel on the bracing east coast. What curious ideas of pleasure their generation have.’
On that very evening a misfortune took place in Mr Carter’s house. Hacker, who was doing extra work for a scholarship exam, sat up late in his cubicle reading Aeschylus, with his chameleon to keep him company. Owing to his position as a house prefect, a position due to his learning and seniority rather than to any gifts of leadership, Mr Carter had allowed him to install a reading-lamp. As his sight was weak he had, without asking permission, changed the electric bulb for an extremely powerful one which almost warmed his small room. About eleven o’clock Hacker, feeling rather jaded, determined to have a surreptitious bath, so he undressed, put on his dressing-gown, and prepared to tiptoe to the bathroom.
‘Are you sleepy, old fellow?’ he asked the chameleon.
The chameleon looked at him with an abstracted gaze.
‘All right,’ said Hacker. ‘I can’t put out the light, or I’ll never find my way back in the dark, but I’ll cover the light up. Will that do?’
As the chameleon showed no disapproval of this suggestion, Hacker took a large silk handkerchief from a drawer and swathed the bulb of the reading-lamp in it. He then closed his door all but a crack and went softly to the bathroom. If the rushing noise of water from the taps was heard at illegal hours, matron was apt to appear vengefully and send the trespasser back to his room, so the prefects in Mr Carter’s house had elaborated a scheme for using the bath late at night without attracting attention. A piece of towelling was fastened onto each tap with an india-rubber band, by which means the water oozed quietly into the bath instead of behaving like Lodore. When the bath had to be emptied, the bather put his sponge over the grating of the waste pipe and let the water percolate gradually, so that matron’s ear was not assailed by the roarings and gurglings with which the bath vulgarly emptied itself.
Hacker, having made all these preparations, put the sponge rack across the bath, propped his Aeschylus up on it with his sponge, and sat comfortably in the gently rising tide of hot water. From time to time his spectacles became dim with steam and he had to wipe them on the bath towel. The bath was nearly full, and he had got through six pages of Aeschylus, when an unreasonable doubt assailed him as to whether he had shut the door of the chameleon’s cage. He tried to reassure himself, but failed entirely. Visions of the chameleon walking down the passage, climbing out of the window, getting as it had once done into the linen cupboard and there being lost for weeks, flitted through his mind. Suddenly he could bear it no longer. He got quickly out of the bath and as he got out his spectacles fell off. He angrily groped on the floor for them, but his blindness and the steamy atmosphere of the bathroom made it impossible to discover their whereabouts till a sharp crack told him he had trodden on them. He picked them up, but the pieces were useless. The only thing was somehow to get back to his room and find the spare pair which his mother had made him bring, a piece of officiousness that he had deeply resented at the time and even now could barely condone. He managed to find his dressing-gown, huddled it over his wet body, and set off groping down the corridor, leaving the tap still running.
As he neared his cubicle, a horrid smell assailed him. Something was undoubtedly on fire. Inspired by affection for the chameleon he made a lightning decision to risk his own life rather than that of his favourite, blundered into the room, saw with his myopic eyes a smouldering tablecloth with charred fragments of a silk handkerchief burning on it, seized the chameleon’s cage and emerged into the corridor and into the arms of Mr Carter, who was just going to bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Mr Carter, sniffing the air. ‘What the devil are you up to, Hacker?’
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‘Nothing, sir,’ said Hacker.
‘Arson, apparently,’ said Mr Carter. ‘Get the fire extinguisher by the stairs.’
‘I’ve broken my spectacles, sir,’ said Hacker.
Mr Carter wasted no time. He strode to the stairs, took down the fire extinguisher and directed it onto Hacker’s burning tablecloth. The noise and smell were gradually rousing the rest of the house. The lower dormitory began crowding into the passage. The news rapidly spread that the house was on fire, and Hacker and his chameleon burnt to death, filling the lower dormitory with pleasurable excitement. Swan and Morland suddenly appeared in their O.T.C. tunics, rapidly assumed for an emergency, worn over their pyjamas, and asked what they could do.
‘Tell those fools to go back to bed,’ said Mr Carter, making a gesture towards the lower dormitory.
As Colin and Philip came out of their rooms at this moment, the lower dormitory chose to understand Mr Carter’s words as applying to his junior masters, and fell into paroxysms of giggles. Matron appeared on the landing above, looking so unexpectedly charming in a pink silk dressing-gown that the Captain of Rowing, an unimpressionable boy of twelve stone, suddenly fell in love with her, but as he was a diffident lad and left at the end of the term to join the Nigerian police, he never told his love and the episode went no further.
Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 6