by Jessica Mann
All the same, Zoe thought, there was something in Mrs Jenkin’s attitude that was reminiscent of a missionary being kind to sinners. A faint sensation of disapproval remained. Zoe told herself not to be hypersensitive. She was bound to feel strange at first until she had learnt the new part in this new play.
The part: a helpmeet.
The costume: unobtrusive. ‘I shall buy a hat and tweeds. They will invite me to coffee mornings.’
Lawrence had said that he and God forbade. He liked other men to envy and other women to admire his wife, so long as he was not pitiful himself, or beneath attention at all. In California he had been insulted by the very politeness of Zoe’s colleagues, since with each other they were casual. They always asked him how he was and what he was up to these days, and no matter what he replied, they would say, absent-mindedly, that it was good, good, that’s great, Larry. Their minds never turned to him for an instant.
The lines: easily learnt. There were certain words a headmaster’s wife must say and others that should never pass her lips. Gillian was full of helpful hints.
The setting: for Acts One and Two, Three and Four, probably even until the final curtain, the scene would be set in St Uny’s Abbey, a rectangle of low buildings around a large courtyard, mostly medieval in date, but with a nineteenth-century bell tower rising above the entrance gate. To one side of the entrance was the former monks’ refectory, now the school hall, and still hung with St Uny family portraits. Above it, where a gallery had been, a flat was being converted for Basil Hutber’s use so that Lawrence and Zoe could spread themselves in the headmaster’s house, to the other side of the great gateway, arched so high that a laden hay wagon could pass underneath. The first headmaster thought the segment of his house retained for his own use was a poky corner. For Basil and Nell Hutber it was about the normal size for a professional man and his family of daughter and son, with its eight bedrooms, four reception rooms and usual ‘domestic offices’. Lawrence Cory did not think about it at all. Zoe was baffled.
The headmaster’s house: built of iron-grey blocks of stone, the windows outlined by shaped pillars of a lighter coloured granite. Age-darkened oak beams and crude but ancient plaster work quarrelled with the Festival of Britain style decorations inside, where rooms had contrasting wallpapers and fabric covered with ochre and olive geometrical designs. Most of the good pieces of furniture had been removed either to the new flat or to Rainsford and Gillian Hutber’s home. Lawrence and Zoe had been left some heavy nineteenth-century pieces and others from the same phase of redecoration as the fabrics and papers, made of light veneered wood and metal, with patterned laminates.
‘It will keep you amused to redecorate the house. What about theatrical posters?’ Lawrence said, anxious to prove that her profession would still be part of their lives. He thought she might start a collection, snuff boxes or netsukes perhaps. Zoe had never been, as she said, a ‘things person’ before, and none of the ornaments had been her own when a Dream Homes published a description of hers in California, saying ‘Zoe Meredith’s living room is full of carefully selected, eclectic objects, casually displayed with the natural elegance of a diplomat’s daughter who was educated on both sides of the Atlantic and took the best from both cultures.’
All Lawrence and Zoe’s possessions were delivered to the headmaster’s house a few days after their own arrival: four small packing cases full. Lawrence signed the receipt and left it on the table below an oval mirror in which he checked that his tie was straight and his hair tidy. He worked at the far end of the school, and little of its affairs could even be seen from the headmaster’s house, most of whose windows faced the front drive which only visitors were permitted to use. Zoe had remarked on the number of signs that read ‘out of bounds to boys’ with disapproval.
‘I should like to have something to do with your pupils,’ she told Lawrence, and he had said he would give it some thought, but it was perfectly obvious that for the time being he did not want her interfering. ‘I don’t want my work to interfere with your life,’ he said.
Now, picking up the briefcase and his black gown, he said, ‘You can have a nice time arranging our things. That will really make the house seem like home.’
But in this large house nowhere seemed suitable for things like Zoe’s elderly teddy bear dressed in clothes she had knitted at the age of ten, or for a brilliantly coloured rug she had bought in Mexico. Zoe still felt like a trespasser among the Hutber belongings and the house still smelt like that of very old people. The school cleaners came three times a week to give the headmaster’s house what Gillian Hutber had called ‘a good going over’. They used batteries of polish and detergent but the aura of must and fustiness seemed ineradicable. Next holidays, if they had time (and Lawrence had plans for changes to the school itself), the maintenance staff would redecorate. Zoe had thought of doing it herself, but Lawrence did not think she should be seen doing so. ‘We don’t want the men taking industrial action.’
Zoe put her glass animals on the bedroom mantelpiece and hung above the kitchen table the framed programme of the Charity Benefit she had compèred the previous year in the presence of the President. She stacked Lawrence’s notes and files about Rex on the desk in the study, so called – he preferred to work in his office in the school. She carried the Rex water colour into the drawing room to try it in different positions. It looked quite wrong against that wallpaper, beside those pictures, a nineteenth-century seascape and a sampler embroidered by Nell St Uny.
Gillian Hutber never rang the bell. ‘We don’t bother about locking our doors in Carmell, it’s one of its great advantages. You’re safe here.’
‘Hullo,’ she carolled now, and walked in carrying a basket covered with a clean cloth. ‘I brought you a cake, and some of my own tomatoes.’
Lawrence’s wry jokes about being the cook in his family, made several times during the post-Christmas visit to the Hutbers, had not been forgotten. Gillian was delighted to remedy Zoe’s deficiencies, and the headmaster’s house was to be kept well supplied with hot meals from the school kitchens in term time. ‘Oh good, your things have come. Now it will really feel like home.’
Zoe wondered whether Gillian and Lawrence had been discussing her together. She said, ‘I am trying to decide where to hang this.’
‘What is it? May I see?’
‘It’s Lawrence’s picture by—’
‘Good gracious!’ Gillian exclaimed. The drawing had taken a moment to register. ‘What on earth is that?’
‘It’s a drawing by Rex.’
‘You can’t possibly hang that here.’
‘But Gillian, it’s by Rex. It’s quite valuable. Don’t you like it?’
‘I don’t care if it’s by Rembrandt.’ Gillian took a deep breath and spoke more gently, reasoning as she might with a child. ‘I am sure that you’ll learn our ways very quickly, Zoe. But Carmell people wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. Don’t forget you’ll be entertaining parents in here, even boys sometimes. You couldn’t let them see that disgusting thing. It’s corrupt.’
‘But Lawrence always—’
‘Look, you probably think we’re very fuddy-duddy here. Old fashioned. But you know we think we are new fashioned. We look forward to a better future, one without the obscenity and shamelessness that you see everywhere nowadays. Have you heard of Watchwomen? I’ll have to take you to a meeting. Carmell has lots of members, and of course Aunt Viola – she’s the President for Life, you know – she came from Carmell, so we’re all very keen on it. This is just the kind of thing that we say is so dangerous.’
‘What, this little picture? What harm could it do?’
‘It degrades everything that we should teach people to respect. That dog. Those men.’ Taking the picture frame in her finger tips, Gillian forced herself to examine it more closely. ‘Can’t you see that . . . I say, how funny.’
‘Funny?’
‘Peculiar. The war memorial.’
‘Don’t all towns in
England have them? Lawrence said—’
‘But this is the Carmell memorial. Look, there’s the lake, and a corner of the pier. And I’m sure that’s our church, look, that tiny building behind the Mayor, in the background.’
‘Lawrence did buy the picture here. He found it in a junk shop when he was at school.’
‘Who did you say it’s by?’
‘It’s a Rex. But that isn’t so peculiar really. He probably visited Carmell. Perhaps he was here for a Remembrance Service, like that.’
‘Not a bit like that,’ Gillian said severely. She put the picture on the table and brushed her fingers against each other as though cleaning contamination away. ‘This isn’t a picture you can possibly let anyone see. I must say I’m surprised that Lawrence . . .’
‘All right, I’ll put it in the study. But you know, Rex is very respectable these days. His pictures fetch quite a lot of money. Lawrence is writing a book about him.’
‘That sort of thing simply won’t do in Carmell,’ Gillian said. ‘We are lucky enough to be far away from the big towns where it’s so difficult for mothers to keep their standards high. We can manage to keep Carmell clean. We think that charity begins at home, and in any case, as Aunt Viola says, we can light a candle a good deed in a naughty world. You see, Zoe, we believe that we’re expressing the views of the silent majority, the people who really matter, the backbone of the country. A spearhead. Oh dear, I know I can’t get it across the way that Aunt Viola does. You’ll have to hear her, if she comes anywhere nearby. But at least I can take you to one of our branch meetings. Watchwomen will change your life.’
‘It has been changed already,’ said the headmaster’s wife.
Chapter Twenty
A maroon board lettered in golden Gothic script stood by the gatepost. It read ‘St Uny’s School, Independent Day and Boarding for Boys aged eleven to eighteen. Headmaster L.C.D.Cory MA.’
Basil Hutber’s name still appeared in the literature. He had become a ‘consultant’ and lay in his hospital bed telephoning indistinct advice. Rainsford Hutber too continued to advise, encourage and warn, like a constitutional monarch.
Lawrence intended to reign himself. But already he was a happy man. He loved working, he loved his status, his place. From the window of his office he could watch pupils and teachers treading paths that he ordained. Power was addictive.
‘Now take your father,’ Lawrence said enviously to Rainsford. ‘He had complete control. He didn’t have to worry about unions – or anyone.’
‘He did own the place.’ Rainsford’s hands, always faintly blue, wandered over the window frame and scratched at the putty. ‘Damp. Have to catch it before rot sets in.’
‘An admirable man, your father. He impressed his ideas on a generation.’
‘You are exaggerating,’ Rainsford said, pleased.
Basil had taken over a failing establishment and made it successful in its limited way. Lawrence’s plan was to transform it into one of the great schools. ‘I have already been asked to join the Association, and put on a National Committee,’ he said. His flesh tingled at the prospect of involvement in Royal Commissions, Advisory Bodies, Headmasters’ Conferences, national discussions.
‘I suppose it helps to get your name known,’ Rainsford said.
‘I find it curious that your father was never active in such organisations.’
‘He devoted his efforts to local problems.’
‘All the same it struck me as odd.’
‘He very seldom went away. Carmell supplied all that he wanted.’
‘These days one has to play a part in a wider sphere.’ Lawrence’s thoughts moved optimistically onwards to radio, television and trips around the world.
‘So you plan to travel round quite a lot?’ Rainsford asked.
‘I think it is necessary, yes. What with charming the heads of preparatory schools and impressing the heads of colleges . . .’
‘Just as well to meet as many people as you can in the world of education, for your own sake. You have to think of the next step.’
That was not the first time that Rainsford had hinted the reminder that there was no headmaster’s freehold at St Uny’s, and that Basil’s heir might terminate Lawrence’s tenancy.
A little stiffly, Lawrence said, ‘It isn’t essential. As I said, your father managed without. A great achievement, when you think what it must have been like for him at first here, it can’t have been easy for the assistant master who married the boss’s daughter.’
‘I have often wondered what ever made my grandfather imagine he could run a school. Not one of nature’s pedagogues, by all accounts. The place must have been a kind of Dotheboys Hall, with my mother acting as an unpaid matron and most of the staff unqualified hacks. They didn’t need certificates or degrees in those days, at any rate not in private schools. When my father took over the boys must have wondered what had stopped hitting them.’
From the start and, Lawrence had to admit, still, St Uny’s School had attracted parents for the wrong reasons, the least deplorable of them being that it was convenient for those who lived in Carmell. But one could not deny that the grandeur of the ancient Abbey and the St Uny family had been a draw. When Basil Hutber married Nell St Uny and her school just before the war he took over an unambitious staff and a high proportion of incapable children. The house was no less tumbledown than it had been when the school opened in 1922. Basil had made what seemed then to be modern if not revolutionary reforms, causing complaints from neighbours about undisciplined boys and disrespectful staff. Fashions in education had changed so much that Hutber’s now, in the final quarter of the century, was not a particularly libertarian school, but in accordance with the most modern radicalism Lawrence was introducing new rules and punishments.
‘I don’t want to interfere,’ Rainsford said. ‘But I do feel personally responsible for what happens at the Abbey.’
Lawrence was only too well aware of it. He could remember a much younger Rainsford speaking of the Abbey as a gold mine that could produce wealth once it was his. Even if Rainsford, once the old man was dead, permitted the school to carry on, he would have the sole and final say about what happened in it.
Both in his initial offers to Lawrence and more recently from his sick bed, Basil had hinted that he meant to protect Lawrence’s, and the school’s, interests. ‘I shall see you right, dear boy,’ he had said. ‘Even as things stand it is all a matter of interpretation. Wording. Words . . .’ As often happened he had relapsed into incoherence. Lawrence had wondered whether he was in a fit state to execute any deed or codicil. Could he insist that the property was vested in a board of trustees? Might he appoint governors, or relinquish his own control? Lawrence hesitated to remind the old man that the school’s future, as well as Lawrence’s own, might be precarious.
‘The estate will be very valuable if we get new industries,’ Rainsford said.
‘The people working in them will need a good school,’ Lawrence told him.
Rainsford picked up the appointments diary and read its entries. ‘Got lots on, I see.’
Lawrence restrained himself from snatching his book away. He said, ‘We have had a pleasing number of enquiries. In fact I’m seeing some prospective parents this afternoon. The father is in the Foreign Office.’ He would impress them with the force of his personality and they would go away believing that he would be the right man to take charge of their son. A housemaster would show them round the buildings, flattering their judgement with a nice mixture of frankness and reverence when he mentioned Lawrence. Then Lawrence would take them over to tea with Zoe. The groundsman would have supplied fresh flowers, the school cook sent over home-made cakes. Zoe would sound gentle and sympathetic. The parents would drive away charmed by her, wondering where they had seen her face before.
Thank God, thought Lawrence, that Zoe would not succumb to the cardinal sins of accidie and self-loathing that had afflicted him when she worked and he didn’t. There was plenty for
a headmaster’s wife to do. She could arrange their new home, read, watch television, embroider, learn to play bridge. Next year she would have her baby to look after. She might become interested in Watchwomen, to which Gillian Hutber had introduced her.
‘How’s Zoe?’ Rainsford asked.
‘A bit nauseated, I’m afraid. The doctor says it’s quite normal.’
‘Gillian felt awful both times though she never gave in to it. Always carried on regardless.’
‘So does Zoe,’ Lawrence said, on the defensive.
‘Keeps herself busy does she? Good, good. There’s always something women can be doing, isn’t there?’
Lawrence went to the car with Rainsford. Out in the playing fields children were dispersing for their recreation, some shouting off towards the woods, others playing the ball game for which there was a current craze. Lawrence pretended not to know about their secret dens and codes. Later, when the older boys came out in their turn, he would ignore their tokens of independence, and maintain a blank pose when they talked bawdy in the lavatories or smoked in the potting shed.
‘They look happy,’ Rainsford said.
‘I hope they are. I hope they stay so.’
Lawrence’s next appointment was with the second master. George Jenkin had been at Hutber’s himself since the age of eight (when the school still accepted such small boys) and had been there ever since except while he was away qualifying himself to return again. He was as devoted to the school as to Basil Hutber himself, to whom he frequently referred as his inspiration. Even now, in suggesting changes to Basil’s successor, he went on about the charisma of the man he still called the Head.