Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Where there are houses there are stables,’ said Watson. ‘Where there are stables there are horseflies. That too speaks for itself.’ He began to draw winged insects on a sheet of paper.

  Dr Munford remained silent. He was one of those few members of the Committee who had been impressed by Watson when he’d been interviewed for the post at the school. In a sense he had fought for him. For various reasons, Mortimer, Daley and the President had all opposed him.

  Daley, the son of a butcher from Stamford Hill, had asserted that a man of lowly origins could go one of two ways: either lapse into complacency, or else, tipsy with power, behave like a despot. Leaving aside his mannerisms, which were off-putting to say the least, and his surly approach to questioning, why had he left Langport so soon? The Revd Mr Henslow’s second paragraph was plain sailing … his appearance and little oddities of manner rendered him liable to caricature … but what was one to make of the sentence … though Mr Watson was in no way to blame, there were one or two small incidents of a nature too delicate to disclose …

  The President had been bothered by what he called the ‘guarded wording’ of the testimonial supplied by the Revd Mr Davies, Principal of St Elizabeth’s College, Guernsey. There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Fortunately Dalton was known to be swayed by intuition rather than good sense, and as no one else could find anything wrong with the letter his opinion was discounted.

  Mortimer had objected to Watson for being too liberal in his outlook. When asked about discipline the applicant had bluntly rejected the notion that flogging was either desirable or necessary. He went further – he said that in his view the use of force demoralised the master quite as much as the pupil.

  Hinchley, for his part, had come up with no reasoned argument against the large, uncommunicative man who sat there, heavy jowls quivering, his blue and curiously innocent eyes fixed on some point above their heads. Hinchley simply didn’t take to him, and never had.

  Though he couldn’t find the precise words of persuasion, beyond mentioning that he was a Gold Medallist in Classics and built like a bull, Dr Munford had stubbornly reiterated his belief in Watson’s fitness for the job. Being a medical practitioner, he was more aware than most of the physical effect a man could have on his fellows, and though he hadn’t listened to the beating of Watson’s heart or to the workings of his lungs, he would have staked his reputation on the soundness of both, and, if it came to it, of those other, less easily located parts of a man, his will and his soul. ‘He’s too dour,’ Daley had protested. ‘Too uppity.’ ‘He’s an honest man,’ Dr Munford had replied. ‘An honest man knows his own value.’

  Now even Hinchley recognised the worth of the head master. The University results, the scholarships gained to King’s College, went beyond anything they could have envisaged ten years before. And in marked contrast to the last head of the school, whose constitution had been so feeble that he had spent more time on his back than at his desk, Watson had never had a day off sick. Even those exaggerated gestures which, in the beginning, had caused such hilarity among the younger boys had become modified with the years. Sometimes, when he was tired, he developed a small facial tick which gave a contemptuous curl to his lip, but the calming and beneficial influence of Mrs Watson was obvious.

  It was a pity that Watson had thought fit to leave the School House. It was true that householders in the vicinity of Stockwell Crescent had complained indignantly of the nuisance caused by beggars swarming about the railings at night, but against that should be set Mrs Watson’s success as a second mother to the boarders. There had been one or two other complaints of a gossipy and domestic nature – doubtless drummed up by the widow woman the drill sergeant had married – which had come to the ears of Mrs Munford. Dr Munford had refused to listen to her. Their own home, he reminded her, could often be described as seething with discord.

  ‘What is to become of Langley?’ asked the head master suddenly.

  Dr Munford hesitated. He understood that he was being tested. Langley was a Lower School boy whose father had gone down on the steamer Adelaide off Margate Sands at the beginning of the year. There had been some concern over whether his fees would continue to be met. He said cautiously, ‘No decision as yet.’

  ‘I see,’ said Watson cryptically.

  ‘Is he a clever boy?’ asked Dr Munford.

  ‘No,’ the head master said. ‘But without an education he will be even less so.’

  After a pause, Dr Munford said, ‘I shall do my best.’ He stood and put on his hat. Before going out of the door he mentioned that Mr Williams was waiting in the playground.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Watson, and asked abruptly, ‘What happened to the straw in the yard?’

  Dr Munford told him that in the long run it had been found uneconomical. ‘It blows about,’ he said.

  He went up the corridor and passed Mr Williams loitering in the hall. The thudding of the dancing boys had ceased. He was pleased to have settled the matter of the flies – Watson was sure to come up with a sensible solution. As to Langley, some relation of the boy’s mother had already written pledging payment of fees for the next three years.

  Dr Munford had just turned the corner into Lansdowne Road when he saw Mrs Watson coming towards him. As soon as he saw her his heart beat more rapidly: he hadn’t forgotten his first meeting with her, when Watson, newly-wed, had brought her back from Ireland. The reception, given for them in the gymnasium, a room so lofty and so full of draughts as to put the damper on any occasion, and attended by the Committee, the masters and a selection of the more influential parents, had turned out to be extremely lively. Mrs Watson had exerted a magnetic pull. She wasn’t particularly handsome and her dress, according to Mrs Munford, had definitely seen better days, but it was hard not to look at her, both directly and over one’s shoulder. Quite apart from the incident with the handkerchief, the Revd Mr Dalton, late Rector of Lambeth and President of the school, had stayed at her elbow for two hours. When Mrs Watson said to him that she hadn’t expected to find such an imposing building outside of the City, for a moment even Dr Munford had felt gratified. There was no way of proving it, but in her presence it did seem that more than one person grew peculiarly confidential. The drawing master, a young man from Aberdeen who was naturally incoherent, spoke lucidly for five minutes, not on watercolours but on the distressing relationship he had with his father. Mrs Hinchley maintained that he used the word ‘detestable’. Mr Clissold M.A., who was so secretive that only the school board knew his age, his Christian name and where he had come from, was heard telling Mrs Watson that, if circumstances and a cowardly disposition hadn’t propelled him into the church, he would have signed on for a life at sea. Mrs Watson herself had said little. She listened with her head tilted to one side, as if to catch undertones. Mrs Hinchley thought she had the air of a lady, which was surprising, as Mrs Munford pointed out, when one considered the state of her clothes. Somehow Mrs Watson had managed to give the impression that it was she, not the Committee, who had organised the party. On leaving, one or two ladies had actually thanked her for her hospitality. Among the men the head master’s stock had risen – he was referred to as a ‘dark horse’. Afterwards, though she had come to live on the premises, Mrs Watson had been rarely seen except at church or on speech days. Then her husband generally brought her along at the last moment, deposited her on a bench at the side of the gymnasium and hurried her away the instant the ceremony was over. Nevertheless, the memory of that one winter evening when fog had rolled along the corridors and the President had been spotted, by several reliable witnesses, picking up Mrs Watson’s handkerchief and holding it to his nose, still lingered.

  Mrs Watson was carrying a green parasol with a cobweb border. Dr Munford asked her if she and Mr Watson were comfortable in their new lodgings.

  ‘We are very quiet,’ she said. She told him she was on her way to see the head master. It was a surprise visit.

  ‘Mr Williams is with him,’ said
Dr Munford. He noticed she was perspiring slightly. Under the parasol her face had assumed a greenish tinge. They agreed that the weather was very warm and that a good downpour of rain would be appreciated.

  ‘The poor flowers,’ wailed Mrs Watson, gazing with compassion at a rose bush wilting in a nearby garden.

  Dr Munford said he was sure she had a sympathy for plants – the geranium in Mr Watson’s room was a credit to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are very kind.’

  When Dr Munford had walked on, Mrs Watson lingered at the fence of the parched garden. It seemed she was overcome with the heat; she dabbed at her eyes and her cheeks with a little white handkerchief. Then, after several minutes had elapsed and still holding the handkerchief to her face, she retraced her steps and began to walk in the direction of the Clapham Road.

  As soon as Dr Munford had gone, Watson went out to look for Williams. But Williams was no longer there. He went back into his room, and when Henry Grey came in with some query about exercise books he spoke to him quite sharply, demanding to be left in peace. A moment later he felt ashamed, and finding the Secretary in the small room off the main hall, apologised to him. ‘I have a headache,’ he said, and returning to his desk immersed himself in work.

  An hour passed and he’d accomplished nothing. He simply couldn’t concentrate; all his thoughts were of his wife, and in particular of the ominous statement she had made that morning. The night before she had seemed listless and depressed. He hadn’t known how to comfort her. Often she suffered from stomachache, and he believed pain in the stomach caused depression. When he had offered to go downstairs and ask Mrs Chapman for a hot brick, Anne had retorted that she hadn’t an ache in her body. Yet in her sleep she had cried out; twice she had turned to him and put her hand on his shoulder. She had muttered her sister’s name. He had tried to take her in his arms but each time she had flung herself away from him and lain on the extreme edge of the mattress.

  In the beginning he had been astonished at how easily he adapted to marriage. They had settled in two rooms in Park Road, a stone’s throw from the school. He’d feared she would allow him less space for his books, but beyond her propping her father’s miniature on the dressing table and putting the oyster shell on the mantel-shelf he would hardly have known she was there. After only a month he got used to seeing her clothes in the wardrobe and to sharing his bed with her. She made things very pleasant for him. Whenever he came into the house she never failed to look at him as if he was important to her. During the bad weather she always had his slippers waiting by the fire; if he had not stopped her she would have knelt at his feet and removed his boots for him. Apart from her welcoming smile and the warmth of his bed, his way of life remained unaltered. He was at his desk by half past eight of a morning, took his dinner at home at twenty past twelve, returned to the school at half past one, and he stayed there until six o’clock at night, sometimes later if the Secretary required his signature at the last minute or one of junior masters needed advice.

  In the evenings, as usual, he dealt with school business, read educational reports or added to the list of books he was compiling for a school library and which he intended to surprise the Committee with at the end of the year. Dale of Blackheath had built up a collection of four thousand volumes, mostly privately donated, and he had been determined that Stockwell should not be left behind. Anne had sat by the fire and read. Once, thinking he was neglecting her, he had asked her opinion on whether it would be better for the sixth form to spend more time on Edwards’ Latin Lyrics, and less on Keightley’s History of Rome, or vice versa, but she said she had little knowledge of either textbook and was equally in the dark as to the principles involved. Nor would she interfere, as she put it, in the choosing of the liturgical prayers or the Bible passage to be read the following morning at Assembly. It was a selection he had to make every night and he could have done with her taking the task from his shoulders.

  Occasionally he was asked to contribute some article of a scholarly nature to The School Master or The Mirror, and then he worked at the table with his back to her. He had made no attempt to embark on any serious literary work of his own because he knew that for the time being his energies must be directed towards establishing his position at the school. Often he was dozing over his books by half past nine, and he was always in his bed by ten.

  A year later, the Committee having obtained a licence to board three pupils, he and Anne had moved into School House, along with Mandell and Henry Grey. Tulley, who had just then married a widow woman from Connemara, had lived at the back of the premises.

  There too they had been content, in Anne’s case even more so, if that was possible. She had the boys to look after, and her windowboxes to plant, and the dubious benefit of Mrs Tulley’s company. If there had seemed any difference in her attitude towards him – rather too many outbursts of temper, or a new note of sarcasm in her voice – he had put it down to the fact that they were growing used to each other. There was a passage connecting the house to the school and she had only to push open the green baize door in the kitchen wall to be within a hundred yards of him. It gave him pleasure, coming out of the Sixth Form room, or going into his study, to see her gliding along the corridor, though several times she had burst into his study without knocking and interrupted meetings with parents.

  One such time she had surprised him with Mrs Peterson, the bereaved wife of a curate from a parish in Norfolk, who had children to support. He had got funds for her out of the Clergymen’s Dependents’ Charity, and brought two sons into the school at reduced rates. Afterwards Anne had accused him of making sheep’s eyes at Mrs Peterson. Though he despised himself for it, it both bewildered and excited him that he had aroused her jealousy. He had thought himself fortunate. For the first time in his life he had come to recognise one particular step on the stair. If he had been blindfolded and placed with his face to the wall and a dozen people had trooped past, he would have known instantly whether she was among them or not. There had been moments, moments of sentiment, when he couldn’t help feeling that something had been denied him, some dimension of returned emotion which he had been led to believe, through hope, through literature perhaps, was his due. On these occasions, he had sought to hold her closer and, like Odysseus attempting to clasp the ghostly shade of Anticleia, thrice like a dream or shadow she fled, and his hands closed on unsubstantial air. He blamed himself entirely.

  Now and then, brushing his hair of a morning, he was so moved by the sight of her hairpins scattered across the dressing-table that he slipped them into his pocket and carried them about with him for the whole day.

  What she had said to him at breakfast had shaken him dreadfully. If only he had held his tongue. He had felt amused rather than perturbed by the sullen expression on her face. She hadn’t opened her mouth, until, provokingly perhaps, he had remarked that he hoped she would soon feel more cheerful. She had replied, ‘To submit cheerfully to an existence that is unpleasing is only possible if one feels it to be temporary.’ He knew those were her exact words because he had gone over them a dozen times in his head, and even if he had remembered them incorrectly he hadn’t mistaken the look which had accompanied them. He had begged her to reflect, and she had mockingly reminded him of the dangers of reflection, bringing up the facetious story of Counsellor Connaghty, who, spotting himself in a mirror unawares, fell down in an apoplectic fit, went off his head and in three weeks died of constipation. As he was due to take prayers at twenty to nine, and as it was already twenty-five minutes to the hour, he had left the house as quickly as possible. All day he had been struggling to think what he should say to her on his return home.

  An existence that is unpleasing, he thought; and consumed with guilt he rose from his desk and, putting his papers into some form of order, rushed from the room. As he entered the corridor he narrowly missed colliding with a Lower School boy who was leaning in an attitude of despair against the wall. He had swept past him before he realise
d that the child was snivelling. Turning, he was in time to glimpse the boy rubbing at his eyes with his fist. He recognised Fraser, the son of a local solicitor, who only recently had begun to attend the school. Though not especially able, the child was considered to be generally cheerful and diligent.

  ‘Why are you in the corridor?’ he asked.

  The boy mumbled something and looked down at the floor.

  ‘Speak up, sir,’ said Watson.

  ‘Mr Hutton sent me out,’ replied the boy. He was trembling either from fear or misery, and yet when he looked up Watson saw in his eyes that same expression of defiance which he had encountered earlier that morning across the breakfast table.

  ‘Send Mr Hutton to me,’ Watson told him, and he too leaned against the wall, his chin sunk on his breast.

  When he heard footsteps approaching he remained in the same position, as if deep in thought.

  The junior master, who had stepped jauntily enough along the corridor, walked the last few paces on tip-toe. He waited for the head master to speak and, when he kept silent, stammered, ‘I am here, sir,’ and, still met with silence, blurted out that he was in charge of the detention class.

  ‘And what of Fraser?’ said Watson.

  ‘Inattentive, sir,’ explained Hutton. ‘I had occasion to speak to him twice.’

  ‘The boy is obviously labouring under a sense of injustice,’ Watson said. ‘A delusion, no doubt, but one cannot be too careful.’ Reaching up his hand he flicked at Hutton’s shoulder, as though smoothing away chalk dust.

  The junior master took a step backwards.

  Watson told him he had observed a red mark on Fraser’s cheekbone. ‘Did you notice it?’ he asked.