The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  There was a pile of assignments in Douglas’s tray when he sat down this morning—French exercises and English essays. He enjoyed the essays and hated the exercises, and, judging by the results, the children felt the same. He started on the exercises first.

  Soon after nine there was a knock on the door. He guessed it was Rosemary. Rosemary was the only girl who bothered to knock before coming into the library. She was an English girl of eleven.

  “Can you help me, please, Mr. Lockwood?” She sat down by his desk.

  “What’s the difficulty?”

  “I can’t do this.” She opened an exercise-book and slid it in front of him a bit diffidently. He at once saw the reason for the diffidence. The page was covered with mathematical workings.

  “Aren’t you doing this for Mr. Duffield?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll have to take it to him.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said: “You’re my tutor, though.”

  “That’s for looking after you generally. I can’t help you with work you’re doing for another master.

  “But Mr. Duffield’s taking a class this period.”

  “You could see him after break.”

  “I want to get my maths assignment finished.” She paused, and then said nervously, “I’ve asked Mr. Duffield, how to do this once already. I’ve forgotten what he said. He’d be furious if I asked him again.”

  Most of the children were pretty afraid of Duffield, and Rosemary was a particularly nervous child. She owed that to her dear devoted parents. She had been tutored by them until the previous year, when she had come to the Great House. They had tried to make up for lack of school discipline by an iron regime at home, never relaxed for a minute. Her father had come up to visit her one week-end and given Douglas a sample of what the child must have been through. He wanted to show how attentive he was to his daughter’s good breeding, and Douglas counted twelve “dont’s” in a little less than five minutes. “Rosemary, don’t walk in front of Mr. Lockwood like that. Square your shoulders and don’t slouch, Rosemary. Rosemary dear stop fidgeting.” He doted on Rosemary. He told Douglas that his child came first in his life, and his wife second. That was lucky for his wife but unlucky for Rosemary

  “What are you stuck over, anyhow?”

  “Long division of pounds, shillings and pence by pounds, shillings and pence.”

  He had to rack his brains before he could remember how to do it properly. He showed her, and then said:

  “You better not tell Mr. Duffield you asked me or we’ll both be in trouble.”

  “I won’t . . .” She looked at the pile of assignments on his desk. “Have you read my essay yet, Mr. Lockwood?”

  “Yes.” It was one she had done last week.

  “Was it any good?”

  “It wasn’t bad.” He fished it out. It was an essay on Christmas. He handed it to her and said, “Read me the first few sentences.”

  She began to read: “On Christmas Eve Ann walked over to her friend Joan’s house to deliver a present. The snow lay on the ground like a white blanket and the pond was a mirror of ice. Ann—”

  “Stop,” Douglas said. “You haven’t been out of Jamaica yet, have you, Rosemary?”

  “Daddy once took me to the Cayman Islands.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any snow or ice there either. You’ve never seen any?” It was curious that at least half the children who’d written about Christmas had pictured a white one with all the Christmas symbols of a northern clime.

  “I’ve seen ice in the refrigerator.”

  “Could you use it as a mirror to do your hair?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, I couldn’t.”

  “I’ve never seen my reflection in the ice of a pond, either,” Douglas said. “In fact, if the ground was covered with snow, the ice would probably be covered too. It sounds as if ‘a mirror of ice’ is a phrase you’ve picked up somewhere and used without thinking. I don’t like your description of the snow, for the same reason. It ‘lay on the ground like a white blanket.’ That’s somebody else’s phrase. Now read this paragraph down here.”

  “As Ann entered Joan’s bedroom, Joan dropped her mending with a guilty look. She did not want Ann to know she was so poor that she had to spend Christmas Eve mending her clothes.”

  “Now that’s a different kettle of fish,” Douglas said. “It reads a though you’d really thought about what you were writing down. It shows that you really understand how poor people sometimes feel. Now go through the rest of the story yourself and underline all the phrases like ‘a mirror of ice’ which you didn’t invent yourself. Then try and replace them with something original.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lockwood.” She slipped the essay into her file. Then she said, “Mr. Lockwood—” She blushed and faltered.

  “Well?”

  “I—I wondered if I could move into another dormitory.”

  “Oh dear. Why do you want to do that?” She hesitated, so he went on, “Can I have one guess? You don’t get on with Silvia.”

  She nodded. “I can’t stand her.”

  “She hasn’t been bullying you?”

  “She hasn’t hit me or anything like that. But she’s always being nasty and bossing everybody about. I don’t see that she’s got any right to. She’s only twelve.”

  “Don’t the others object to being bossed about?”

  “Yes, but there’s nothing they can do.” She paused. “Nobody likes her, but some people say they do because they’re afraid of her. She once told everyone who liked her to put up their hands. We all did except one.”

  “What did she do about that?”

  “She told the girl who didn’t that she’d give her three sweets if she’d put up her hand, and the girl did.”

  “It’s a pity any of you put up your hands.”

  “None of us can ever talk if she wants to. She’s always boasting. I don’t believe half what she says. She says she doesn’t mind if she’s expelled from this school, like she was from her last.”

  “She won’t want to be expelled if we can make her happy here,” Douglas said.

  Rosemary looked doubtful.

  “I don’t see what use it is, if she makes everyone else unhappy.”

  “She wouldn’t make other people unhappy if she was happy herself.”

  “I don’t think she’s the sort of person who’ll ever be really happy,” Rosemary said. “Anyhow, I’d much rather be in a dormitory full of people I like.”

  Douglas said, “It would be nice if we could all live in a world full of people we like. Unfortunately we’re always knocking up against people we don’t like. If we’re going to have any peace of mind we must try and tolerate them. They’ve probably got some good points somewhere if we’re patient enough to look for them. I wish you’d stick it out a bit longer in Silvia’s dormitory. After all, somebody’s got to. We can’t keep her shut up in a room by herself all the time.”

  He hated having to sermonize like that—he knew what he’d feel like if he had to live in a dormitory with Duffield and Morgan—but there wasn’t much else he could do. Rosemary just looked miserable, and said:

  “All right, Mr. Lockwood. I’ll try and get to like her if I can.”

  After Rosemary had gone he started worrying about what he was going to do with Silvia, and he was still sitting there worrying when Mrs. Pawley came into the library.

  “Oh, hullo, Douglas,” she said. “My husband wants you to go down and have a word with him.”

  Mrs. Pawley’s dogs had rushed past her into the room. They were two large, irresponsible Dalmatians. They followed her, or at least pranced about in her vicinity, wherever she went in the school grounds. Douglas hated their invasion of the library, because they were capable of overturning chairs, nosing trays off his desk, and
even dragging books from the shelves in their friendly, tail­ wagging fashion. Dogs were supposed to grow like their owners, or vice versa, but Mrs. Pawley had nothing in common with her black-spotted Dalmatians—certainly not the black spots. Although she was Jamaican, in the sense that she was born in Jamaica, she was thoroughly English—sometimes rather too thoroughly, Douglas thought.

  She was thirty-five. She paid only fitful attention to her appearance, and the dull yellow of her hair was faintly suspicious. She gave the impression of being a discontented woman. Like so many women in the colonies, she yearned for England, and although she paid lip-service to her husband’s shaky convictions on the equal rights of Negroes, she secretly despised everything colonial. She had always made herself agreeable to Douglas, presumably because he was English and spoke without a marked provincial accent. She usually called him by his Christian name, a favouritism spared to Duffield.

  “I’ve no idea what it’s about,” she said. Her manner was rather offhanded in a neurotic way.

  “I’ll go down now.”

  The dogs were scampering about the library, full of infinite jest. Mrs. Pawley called to them harshly. “Come here, Rex! Here, Queenie!” They bounced out of the room with uncustomary obedience.

  Mrs. Pawley accompanied Douglas out to the garden. She was wearing her navy-blue slacks. She was not very tall, and she walked with a kind of impatient swagger.

  “I’m sorry you had such an appalling time yesterday, Douglas.” Her voice was also impatient, as if she had no interest in what she was talking about. “I don’t know why that thing had to crash near us. My husband’s always writing to ask them not to fly over the school. If they’d taken any notice there probably wouldn’t have been an accident at all.”

  “Perhaps not.” Her arguments were never very logical, but it wasn’t worth-while contradicting her.

  They strolled through the garden, amongst the sprawling bushes of Japanese Hat and white, red, and purple bougainvillea. The small orange flowers of the Japanese Hat attracted humming-birds, and two or three were hovering there now, their wings almost invisible with the speed of their vibration, but the feathers on their bodies a radiant, liquid green in the sun.

  Mrs. Pawley picked impatiently at a red bougainvillea as they passed.

  “By the way,” she said, “did you find some flowers in your room the other afternoon?”

  “After I’d been down in Kingston? Yes, I didn’t know who’d put them there.”

  “I told my servant to cut you some from the garden. I thought you might like to have them. It’s rather dreary coming back to that bungalow after a day in town.”

  “I’m always delighted to get back,” he said. “It’s far too hot in Kingston now.”

  She picked at the bark of a tree with her nails.

  “I expect you’re beginning to make friends in Kingston, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know anyone there,” he said.

  “Really? How extraordinary.” She gave a short laugh. “I’d imagined you had an awfully gay time. You must find us so appallingly dull up here after living in London.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Of course you must. There’s no need to be polite. You must find us hopelessly unsophisticated.” He protested again, and she said, “We are, I’m afraid. My husband at any rate. Of course when I met him I’d been living in London for years. I only lived in Jamaica until I was five, you know.”

  “I know.” She had made a point of telling him two or three times before.

  “I should never have believed that I’d come back here one day as a schoolmistress.”

  “Hardly a schoolmistress,” he said. She was supposed to be in charge of the girls and do the catering with Mrs. Morgan, but she took no classes.

  “Isn’t that how you think of me?” She looked at him quickly, and then as if to show that she didn’t care about the answer, she turned and called abruptly to the dogs, “Rex! Queenie! Come here!” She turned back to him and said quite snappily, “I expect my husband will be waiting for you. Don’t let me keep you.”

  He left her and went on down the slope towards Pawley’s bungalow, which was two or three hundred yards below the Great House. He was a little apprehensive about the purpose of this summons. Two or three days ago, on his day off in Kingston, he had entered into conversation in the bar of the Myrtle Bank with a man who owned fifteen thousand acres of sugar, bananas, and coconuts in St. Thomas. He was rather a loud-mouthed, back-slapping sort who over-compensated for his few drops of Negro blood by talking about “we white fellows” and boasting of his wealth, but Douglas had found him quite interesting. He joined the man for dinner, and then let himself be talked into going on to a night-club. The night-club was called The Glass Bucket. The man knew plenty of girls there, and they danced until eleven. Then Douglas said he had to go. He was driving the station-wagon from the school, and he told the man that he would drop him anywhere he liked. As they started off, the chap said:

  “You’re not stuck up, are you, man? I mean, you like to see a bit of life?” He talked with the Jamaican accent that sounded like Welsh.

  Douglas laughed. “Lord, yes. I’ve got to get back now, though.”

  “Why not come along for half an hour? I know plenty of places.”

  “I ought to have been back hours ago,” Douglas said. “But I’ll put you down where you like.”

  “Then take the next turning to the right, man.”

  They turned into a road of small bungalows with little front gardens, like a poorer suburb of an English seaside resort. Two half-caste girls in cotton dresses were hanging over one of the gates. They stood up expectantly as the station-wagon stopped. The chap got out, and said good night and went to the gate, where they awaited him with frozen grins.

  It struck Douglas afterwards that he’d been a fool to run the man right up to the brothel in the school car; and for that matter dancing at the night-club wasn’t the sort of pursuit that a schoolmaster in Jamaica was expected to follow. Some of the girls the chap had dug up were not exactly from the tennis-playing top set. Probably someone had seen him or heard that he was there, and had written to Pawley threatening to remove their child unless the master who went the rounds of night-clubs and brothels wasn’t promptly dismissed. Scandal travelled fast in Jamaica. Anyhow, it wasn’t as though teaching was his career, or as though he had to depend on this job for a living. He could afford to knock around for a year or two before he settled down to serious work again.

  As he went up the steps of the verandah he saw that the french windows of Pawley’s study were open. He knocked on the glass and went in. Pawley was sitting at his desk. He went on writing for a moment, and then looked up as if he had only just noticed Douglas.

  “Ah, Lockwood! You got my message?” He beamed and goggled through his horn-rimmed spectacles, and waved Douglas to a chair. “I’m afraid you’ll find that one a bit rickety, but I don’t think there’s any real fear that it’s going to collapse. If you’ve any doubts about it, though, I should draw up the one from over there.”

  Pawley always opened an interview with a few chatty remarks—he’d probably read somewhere about how to put people at their ease. The chattiness was no indication that he wasn’t going to talk about the brothel, but as it turned out he wasn’t—he was going to talk about Silvia.

  You couldn’t help feeling about Pawley that there was something missing—something like gin from a cocktail or seasoning from the soup. Probably Pawley felt it too, and that was why he wore a beard. He must have hoped the beard would make up for what wasn’t there.

  He was a lank and tallish man, dressed in a badly fitting tropical suit. The beard was certainly the most impressive thing about him, but even so it failed to give him a positive and commanding presence. It somehow didn’t match his features; and until you had spotted the incongruity and imagined him clean-shaven, you had an u
ncomfortable feeling about him as you might about some woman wearing an unsuitable wig. Even then you went on feeling a bit uneasy. There was something fish-like about the way his eyes goggled from behind the horn-rimmed spectacles.

  “You’re prepared to risk it, then?” He was still talking about the chair.

  “This’ll be all right,” Douglas said. He sat down. There was nothing wrong with the chair at all.

  “It’s on your own head, then,” Pawley beamed. “I only like to warn you, so that if the worst should happen you can’t hold me responsible.” He leant back and put the tips of his bony fingers together. His eyes looked shapeless and indistinct behind the lenses. “I suppose you’ve never forgiven me, have you?”

  “What for?” Douglas asked. Pawley always liked to introduce his subject cryptically.

  “For picking on you to bear our heaviest cross. I’m sure you know what I mean now.” He beamed. “I thought it was time we had a little chat about the lady—I haven’t had much chance to watch what was going on lately. All this administration, you know . . .” He indicated the papers on his desk with a martyred smile. “I expect you picture me sitting here twiddling my thumbs, don’t you? I only wish I could give you some idea of what a vast amount of paper work is necessary to keep this place running.”

  “I’d handle half of it in exchange for Silvia,” Douglas said.

  “That sounds ominous,” Pawley said. “I hope you haven’t decided we were unwise to take her on?”

  “I haven’t decided that yet.” Silvia had only been at the Blue Mountain School for a fortnight. She had come in the middle of term, after being expelled from her last school for incorrigibly bad behaviour. Pawley had accepted her in the hope of improving her and demonstrating the superiority of his progressive system.

  “Rather a puzzling incident occurred yesterday afternoon,” Pawley said. “It was while you were at the crash.” He put on a smile that looked suspiciously reproachful. “As a matter of fact, I looked for you at the time. I didn’t know where you were.”