'Your old genius for generalising from a personal affront even an imagined one,' Lang said. 'And Tony's an equally hypothetical antidote - though to what, heaven knows.'
'Maybe. Let's not start on that'
'Don't blame yourself; and do,' Lang said at his most enigmatic. 'come and see me.'
David smiled rather wanly. 'Yep !' he said.
'It's me,' Tony announced unnecessarily, closing the door behind him. 'I've come to pack my case secretly in here ... No!' He ran the few remaining steps across the room and clapped his hand over David, mouth. 'No questions! Sandel is at the helm and he knows best' He relaxed his hand cautiously, testing the efficacy of his command. 'Promise?'
David mumbled and the hand instantly tightened again.
Tony brought a knee unscrupulously into action. 'Promise!'
David nodded, choking.
'Okay!' Tony breathed. He took his hand away.
Then he spun joyously across the room and threw open the wardrobe. Without warning he stood on his hands; his feet crashing to against the wall. Three cheers for the telephone!' he said. 'Do you know who invented it? It was Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.' Tony's feet hit the floor again but he didn't pause. 'Bet you don't know what the first thing he said on his telephone was? No, you don't, see! He said: "M r. Watson, come here I want you".'
Chapter 29
'Sir,' Tony whispered, 'go out to the pub quickly.'
His voice held a mixture of irony and urgency as he bent over David in the staff room. Its only other occupant was the Major who was reading a paper. The word 'pub', however, had been of sufficient significance to penetrate his concentration. He said:
'Get along with you, Sandel. Can't you see Mr. Rogers is busy marking? He doesn't need you to tell him when it's time for a drink - eh, David?'
'Rather!' David said with enthusiasm. He often found that the best way of answering Hayden.
Tony's only reply was to square his behind more deliberately towards the Major, leaving no doubt as to how he regarded the intrusion. He pinned David's wrists to the arms of his chair. All but touching his face, he moved his eyes in a stage gesture towards the door. 'David!' he said very quietly. As David got up a small boy appeared in the half-open doorway.
'Mr. Rogers, sir, Mrs. Jones wants to see you, sir.' he said breathlessly.
'Knock!' Tony exploded with uncontrolled fury. 'Goddam it, boy, this is the Staff Common Room!'
'But, sir, Mrs.-'
'You knock.' Tony advanced menacingly. 'Now, once round the whole playing field.'
'It's dark!' the child complained indignantly, startled by the imposition. 'I can't!'
'Then you can do fifty press-ups in the hall, can't you?' Tony said, placing his hands on the small boy's shoulders.
David, who was standing near the door, became conscious of the fragility of Tony's hands as they lay patronisingly, yet an unspoken threat on the child's shoulders.
'But, Sandel, Mrs. Jones …' the small boy began.
We've got your message, Cox, now go!' Tony said softly, without releasing him from the hypnotic look of his eyes.
'Do I still have to do the press-ups?' Cox pleaded.
'Yes.' Tony said. 'On your Cub's honour. And I'd stand over you myself with a cricket bat if I could spare the time.'
'Big bully Sandel!' Cox blurted out.
'Little boy,' Tony said with a contemptuous toughening in his voice, 'if you haven't gone when I open my eyes, I'll do you!'
It was uncompromising. Desperately David looked over towards the Major, but no sympathy was forthcoming. In fact the battle-hardened man hadn't looked up from his paper. Then, ridiculously, Tony closed his eyes and suffered an expression of martyrdom to illumine his face. Cox scuttled away.
'He won't do them anyway,' Tony said in the hall, as if answering David's unspoken protest. 'A rule is a rule; besides, I had to protect you.'
He took David's college scarf from the hallstand and disposed it dashingly about his neck.
'All comrades are equal but some are more equal than others, I know,' David muttered through the convolutions. 'What do you think you're doing with me now, anyway?'
But Tony, with the palms of his hands firmly established over his kidneys, had already propelled him out into the darkened porch. 'Listen,' he said. 'Mrs. Jones wants to see you. But you've got to avoid her until four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Will you do that?'
'No,' said David. 'I can't happily ignore the instructions of the management the way you seem to.'
Tony sighed. But there was no suggestion that anything other than his own will would triumph. It was a formal sigh. 'That's the attitude I was afraid of. It's been the root of the whole trouble too. I've got it organised now though ... Oh, brother!'
Suddenly, in the faint light that came through the opaque glass of the front door, Tony smiled. It was not a formal smile; but the full effect, to which the silver wire had never been more than an unnecessary ornament. David weakened. 'I don't suppose you'll reveal this "organisation" any more than you've revealed the reason for your packing yesterday. But why this specific trysting hour with the lady? Why four o'clock tomorrow?'
For the first time the boy's resolution seemed to waver. Absentmindedly almost, he endeavoured to knot David's third and index fingers together.
'Well,' he said, deliberating, 'for one thing she'll be eating.'
'And?'
So she'll be in a good mood,' Tony said. The pronoun carried the ghost of a capital.
'Is that all?'
Tony looked at him sideways; then shook his head. 'No ... Not exactly. But will you do it? It really is important.' David stared out at the winter night into which he was being driven. Some imaginative child had given one of the gnomes luminous eyes and a prominent luminous navel in the days before radiation scares when you could still buy small tins of the paint. 'All right,' he said. 'It's my half-day, so I've no call to be here.'
"Then I'll fix it with the Joneses,' Tony said confidently. He reached into the pocket of his jacket. 'There's a letter for you ... A messenger brought it.'
David opened the unstamped envelope in the dim light. It was a note from Ricks. The college, it seemed, were prepared to take him back into residence at once. They must have his decision the next day.
;Is it important?'
'I don't think so,' David said,
'Have you enough money for the pub?'
David smiled faintly to himself. 'Yes.'
Tony said, 'Don't be too late. And don't come back drunk.' He found a loose end of the St. Cecilia's scarf, and pinned it to his ears like a veil so that only his eyes showed.' I'll wait up.' Then he swung open the veil like the hinged door of a henhouse, and pecked David on the cheek.
Mrs. Jones was in fact eating. She put down a scone as David entered the room. However, despite Tony, suppositions about her tea-time moods, she didn't now seem disposed to resume the scone. She looked embarrassed.
David had spent the morning with his usual classes, but, in the interim periods particularly, had gained the impression that Tony was playing the role of fleet escort, and was steaming guardian circles about his person. Once he had been abruptly manoeuvred into the lavatory, while he was forbidden the staff room altogether during the break. At four o'clock exactly, though on the retarded authority of Tony's watch alone, he had been released from his room. 'Now God save Sandel and King David!' he said simply, and relapsed into an attitude of unsubtle devotion in the best armchair.
Mrs Jones cleared her throat of crumbs as David explained his presence.
'Yes, we did rather want to see you, Mr. Rogers,' she said; then appeared to be waiting for something.
Sure enough Jones got up and made his way out of the room with mumbled excuses. Royal, or simply courteous, the plural pronoun was no longer valid. Jones had closed the door behind him, and now they both remained standing.
'Mr. Rogers,' Mrs. Jones said, 'I will come straight to the point.' She let her head sink into her shoulders, produ
cing a third chin, while her eyes swam hack and forth across the floor like the diseased carp in the St. Cecilia's pond. 'We are not very happy about you.'
'I'm sorry,' David said.
'The headmaster thinks you are a very good teacher,' Mrs. Jones went on, 'but that can't make up for other things, can it now?'
David waited. Mrs. Jones' face had begun to quiver. Then she took the plunge.
'We mean your morals, Mr. Rogers.'
David continued steadily to look at her: feeling no dismay, or any involvement at all, as if he were watching a bad play. Still avoiding his eyes, Mrs. Jones burst out suddenly: 'Oh. Mr. Rogers, how can you stand there! How can you stand there when you've been having that horrible sexual intercourse with Miss Poole!'
She had found the words with difficulty. For David the spell was broken. He stared at, her now wildly. There was silence for a moment while Mrs. Jones recovered. Then she said:
'And I hope you are even more ashamed of making the head-boy sleep in your bed in order to do it. Yes,' she went on, 'you made the head-boy use your room so that you could use his with Miss Poole.'
David opened his mouth. It was getting too much for him. But Mrs. Jones cut his words short.
'Please don't lie, Mr. Rogers. The head-boy was seen coming out of your room early in the morning and his own room was at the same time found to be locked.'
David wanted badly to light a cigarette. He said, 'Mrs. Jones, if only for Jean's sake, I must tell you that this is quite untrue. I can't conceive where you can have got such an idea.'
'There are little birds in the trees,' Mrs. Jones said primly.
'I know there are. But that doesn't answer my question, does it?'
'Can you think of any other reason why the head-boy should have been sleeping in your bed, Mr. Rogers?' Now David did light a cigarette. Mrs. Jones nodded her permission, but her face contrived to make it clear how she felt about what, after all, was only another vice. David said:
'I must insist once and for all that I have had no intimacy of any sort with Jean Poole. As for Tony ...' He was never allowed to finish the sentence.
'I don't want to hear your excuses and reasons,' Mrs. Jones cut in abruptly. 'The other thing that upset us, Mr. Rogers, is your rudeness.'
David suspected it was the child's connotation, and adapted his mind patiently.
'You were very rude to me personally the other day.'
'Then I am sorry,' David said, genuinely enough.
'This isn't a hotel, Mr. Rogers, you know. It's a private house!'
David's head began swimming again.
'You can't just ask anyone to lunch!'
For the first time indignation stirred seriously in David. 'If you mean Lang,' he said, 'I found the headmaster and asked him whether he might stay. I should have liked to have asked yourself, but you weren't available.'
Mrs. Jones was silent for a moment. Then: 'Well, really, Mr. Rogers, it wasn't quite the act of a gentleman, was it? Your friend was embarrassed by being asked to stay uninvited.'
'Lang and I have known each other since we were nine,' David said evenly. 'I think I would know if I had placed him in an embarrassing situation. Incidentally.' he added. more pointedly than he had intended, 'Bruce Lang is the only real Christian that I have ever met!'
Mrs. Jones ignored this; maintaining her mentality unruffled. 'If you weren't properly brought up, Mr. Rogers, and don't know how a gentleman should behave, we can't teach you now.'
Suddenly there it was; a blazing anger. But in the same moment David knew that it would be both pointless and unkind to release it. Unsure, as so often in his life, where real feeling ended, and histrionics took over, he swung on his heel towards the door.
There was a knock, and a small boy opened the door, timidly holding it aside. David realised even before she spoke that the woman who now entered the room could not be other than Prudence Laying.
'I've caught you, Amelia!' she boomed. 'Stuffing yourself too, I see. Jones is in hiding, I suppose?'
Prudence Laying strode across the room after glancing at Mrs. Jones' interrupted scones. She was the sort of woman who, at sixty, would still look right in climbing boots. Now she turned to David.
'I know it,' she stated. 'You're David,'
David shook her hand.
Prudence Laying took what was almost a deliberate step backwards and David had the impression of being scrutinised like a tricky escarpment. At last he seemed to have been sufficiently measured.
'Good!' Prudence Laying announced enigmatically.
David was relieved when she turned again to the obviously flustered Mrs. Jones.
'Amelia,' she said, 'I'm taking the boy away at once.'
David recalled that Tony's aunt wasn't a woman who wasted words.
'But first things first. I'm not normally one to interfere with school discipline on a boy's behalf, but confiscating that book of statues was ridiculous. Hand it over! Does it have any of the Etruscan phallic stuff?' She turned to David conversationally.
'I really don't know,' he confessed. 'I've only seen what Tony subsequently showed me.'
Mrs. Jones produced his present, which he had no idea had been confiscated.
'Are you all ready and packed, David?' Prudence Laying asked.
He very soon will be!' Mrs. Jones said bravely, rallying a little.
Miss Laying ignored her. It was borne in upon David that they must be old, if not happily assorted, school friends.
'Tony's packed,' he said.
'But you have agreed to take him to Italy?' Miss Laying was earnest.
'Why, I will.' David said. groping for comprehension. 'I'd heard nothing to that effect.'
Suddenly Prudence Laying laughed. 'Gracious me Whatever can Ant think he's up to. He didn't talk to you at all about this?'
David shook his head and smiled. 'No ... Though there have been curious signs that some scheme was afoot.'
'Then that's settled.' Miss Laying looked relieved. I've got plane bookings for tomorrow, and the boy's passport. The rest is up to you.
Two years ago David would have shifted his feet, but now he found himself simply nibbling his lip. After a second he stopped that too, although the trust had moved him quite as much as the amateur performance of his first symphony in an asbestos shed in Slough. It had been raining then, whereas the room he stood in now was red with the November sunset.
'I'll look after him,' he said.
Throughout this conversation Mrs. Jones had maintained the air of someone who had successfully insulated herself from kitchen smells. Now Prudence Laying turned to her again. At the same moment there was a knock on the door and Tony came in.
'You'd better stay now, Ant,' Miss Laying commanded.
Tony said, 'Yes, Aunt,' rather as if one of the nursery prints had spoken aloud. He sat down by the door, but didn't take his eyes off the carpet.
'You'll understand why I'm taking him away, Amelia,' Miss Laying went on. 'You can see for yourself he's outgrown a prep school, and this nonsense in the press finally decided me.'
Mrs. Jones produced a third chin and looked secretly pleased.
The lounge of the Mitre was full, but David was as little aware of the other people as Crawley might have been. Prudence Laying put down her coffee cup. For a second David thought she was going to ask for a cigar.
Despite the latitude he had been allowed in planning the holiday, Prudence's orders for Tony's welfare were explicit. The temptation to regard her as an alarming crank had been modified by her obvious dedication to her nephew's upbringing. Superficially David knew he was committed to a trust against which he would find no cause to rebel. His real feelings went deeper.
'The boy should expand,' Prudence Laying said. 'Southern sunshine will see to that. You've ten weeks before term starts. But it may be we'll cheat the public schools yet. He wants instrumental training. I've arranged for an audition with a small school in London. That's in January.'
'He wants to train as a concert p
ianist?' David was astonished.
'You didn't know?'
'I'd no idea.'
There may be a lot you've still to learn,' Prudence Laying said. 'Both of you.'
'Of course he's old to begin instrumental training,' David said, getting up. 'But then I don't know what his potential may be.'
He escorted Prudence Laying to her car. It was as old as Frescobaldi, but had many yards of bonnet. Then he returned to the school for the last time, where he packed the majority of his worldly possessions, and made arrangements for the remainder. By the time he had finished St. Cecilia's clock was booming two, sadly across the Great Park.
Frescobaldi's radiator cork was turned towards London Airport. The idea was that he should be left to die there. Out of consideration for his age they had loaded only hand luggage.
'I think you'd better confess,' David said.
Tony looked up brightly. 'What?' Then he added, 'Oh yes!'
'To start at the beginning, why did you put on a show, anyway? Why didn't you just ask me about the Italian plans?'
'Tony considered a cardboard shoe-box he held in his hands.
'I thought you wouldn't like to leave the school suddenly because you're expected to give a. term's warning,' he explained.
'So you arranged to have me sacked?'
Tony said nothing. David looked up at the reversed image of the notice on the windscreen: Help stamp out New Austin Sevens.
'What about Jean Poole?'
'That was hardly me, honestly,' Tony said. 'There was a rumour going about that you liked her, though.'
'But locking your door was no accident ... You knew Mrs. Jones pried around?'
'Yes. I knew that,' Tony said slowly. He was cornered.
'Then you did try to get me sacked!'
'I suppose so ... But only to make it easy for you'
'Funny sort of logic.'
'Well, it worked, didn't it?'
'Demonstrably.' David admitted. 'That's the wardrobe wool you're wearing, isn't it?' he asked after a moment.
'Yes,' Tony was running his knuckles down the new creases, 'celebration. Did you know they're making some of our best shorts with zips?'
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