Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  He hurried back to St Martin’s Road. On the corner he met Henry Rogers, manager of the Beulah Laundry, who wished him good morning and whom he ignored. Passing his own house without looking up, he walked further along the row to No. 32.

  Mr Bush’s son, Fred, answered the door and said his father was out. Watson explained that he had a sitting for his portrait that afternoon, but owing to the preparations for the prize-giving he would have to cancel it. Fred said his father was expected at any moment and why didn’t he stay and deliver the message himself. The Revd Mr Anderson was already waiting.

  ‘No,’ replied Watson. ‘I can’t stop.’ But hardly had Fred closed the door before he changed his mind and knocked again. He was told to go through to the studio, where he found Mr Anderson seated in a leather armchair daubed with yellow paint and reading a newspaper.

  Watson’s portrait was set up on the easel by the window. It was a full-length pose with the subject wearing a degree gown and clutching a book.

  ‘It promises to be rather good,’ said Mr Anderson, ‘though the flesh tones are somewhat livid.’

  ‘He works in glazes,’ Watson told him.

  Anderson thought it must be tiring, being painted. ‘I don’t think I could take the standing still,’ he said. ‘I should probably become giddy.’

  Watson said he didn’t mind it. He had plenty to think about, and at any rate it got him out of the house. He had meant to say ‘school’, not ‘house’, and bothered by this slip of the tongue he turned too quickly and brushed his shoulder against the painting. The canvas was still wet; he rubbed at his coat sleeve, and now he had crimson paint on his hands as well as ink.

  ‘Wipe it off on the chair,’ suggested Anderson, when no suitable cloth could be found.

  Watson said that today was to have been his fourth sitting. Last week Mr Bush had gone to Brighton for a few days and this week he himself was forced into a postponement.

  ‘Bush is always going somewhere,’ Anderson said. ‘The man’s a marvel of energy for his age.’

  ‘But then he’s not married,’ said Watson.

  ‘No,’ agreed Anderson, and after a pause asked how Mrs Watson was keeping.

  ‘Exceptionally well,’ replied Watson. ‘She will be at the ceremony tonight.’ He said he would be grateful if Mr Anderson could tell Bush that he wouldn’t be able to come this afternoon. ‘I’ve already given the message to Fred,’ he explained, ‘but one never knows with him.’

  If it had been an ordinary day, to be followed by an evening at his desk – he had set himself to write four pages a night, both sides – he would have called in at home on his way to the school and made his peace with Anne. Tonight, however, work was out of the question.

  Last night she had accused him of meanness again, this time over the matter of a housekeeper. Alarmed, he had tried to change the subject, but she had driven the issue through to its obvious conclusion and pushed beyond endurance he had said things best forgotten. As usual she had put the words into his mouth. Afterwards he was filled with remorse, followed by pity, and then, naturally, he’d been unable to write one page, let alone four. He had made a botched job of his letter to the Bishop of Winchester. She’d said she was sick of the sight of him labouring away at his desk. She didn’t realise that the labour lay not in the writing but in the effort required to placate her and maintain her in a reasonable frame of mind.

  And yet it was hard on her; he did see that. Every year she anticipated the publication and reception of his latest book. It was always his next book that was bound to be greeted with acclaim and sell in thousands. Though it was kindly meant, he could have done without her telling him so. For when the mixture turned out as before, lukewarm reviews and no more than a hundred copies sold, she suffered twice over, for herself and for him, and he had to bear the brunt of this double, crushing disappointment.

  Arriving at the school he found that there was some confusion over the number of chairs needed in the Gymnasium. There were at least three rows too many. He couldn’t understand Grey’s insistence that the extra chairs were necessary. For over twenty years they had been involved in the prize-giving arrangements, and during the last ten the number of parents expected had hardly varied. There was something odd about Grey’s behaviour. As a rule he was more than anxious to share his duties, and yet today he went missing at intervals, and once, when Watson walked into his office, he jumped almost a foot in the air as if he had been caught in some guilty act. Perhaps it had something to do with his having recently gone into print. He had published two books, Trowel, Chisel and Brush and Resting without Resting. Watson had been presented with copies of both, fulsomely inscribed – they had always disliked each other – only two weeks before. He still hadn’t bothered to cut the pages.

  He had meant to go home for his dinner, but there wasn’t the opportunity. One of the presentation books turned out to have its centre pages missing, and another copy had to be fetched and the rest examined in case they were similarly flawed; and then later on Matthews, the head boy, son of a local grocer and exceptionally brainy, was found to have developed a spectacular rash on his face and trunk. Fortunately he was a spotty boy in his own right. Watson said the rash wouldn’t be noticed under the lights and advised him to say nothing about it to anyone.

  Before he went home to change his clothes he tidied his desk. The President and the Board would be drinking a glass of wine with him before the start of the ceremony. He was putting the contents of the drawers into some sort of rough order when he came across an envelope. It was addressed in his mother’s hand. He no longer had in his possession the book she had given to him in childhood – Anne had given it to a boy with scarlet fever – but he would have known her handwriting anywhere. Deliberately he tore the envelope into pieces. He had found it in Anne’s trunk when they had moved from Montpelier House to St Martin’s Road. He had never told her of his discovery – what purpose would it serve – and perhaps it was as well that she had destroyed the contents. There was possibly a sort of love buried under her reasons for getting rid of the letter. He was putting the pieces into the wastepaper basket when Grey came in and asked him if he had prepared his speech for tonight.

  ‘What speech,’ he said, all at sea. It was not up to him to make a speech.

  ‘One never knows,’ muttered the Secretary, and he went out again.

  Watson thought the man was ill. The President usually spoke for twenty minutes, then the chairman of the Proprietary Committee, then the chairman of the Examining Board; and lastly the wife of the chairman of the Proprietary Committee was brought to her feet. Hers was a mercifully short oration. She was required merely to say thank you for the bouquet of mixed flowers handed up by the blushing, and in this case infectious, head boy. Never, at any time, had the head master been called upon to speak.

  He left the school at five o’clock. He had an hour in which to change his clothes. St Martin’s Road was just round the corner; in the summer months when the dressing-room window was open, he could hear the hand bell ringing for morning school. He was not worried about Anne’s reception of him; she so enjoyed going out and feeling herself the centre of a crowd that once over the doorstep she would forget their quarrel and behave towards him with almost embarrassing solicitude.

  As he entered the hall he saw her at the top of the stairs, looking down at him. He knew at once she was unwell. If he hadn’t run up and caught her, she would have fallen and rolled to the bottom. She was actually swaying as he took the stairs two at a time.

  He helped her to her bed and fetched a cloth from the dressing-room. He was dreadfully moved by her condition. ‘Anne, Anne,’ he murmured, and pressed the cloth to her forehead. She was in her petticoats and there was a mauve stain on the front of her bodice. She was sixty years old and she looked at him as though she believed she was a girl. Evidently she had begun to get ready for the evening – he could smell scent in the room and there was a dusting of powder on her flushed face.

  ‘I lov
e you,’ she said. ‘Remember that.’

  ‘No,’ he cried, ‘No.’

  ‘I love you,’ she repeated.

  Sickened, he longed to tell her that love was not the problem. Love dropped out of the sky, unsought, unearned. He had loved his mother. It was liking someone that was the difficulty.

  ‘I must go,’ he told her. ‘I have to go.’ He pulled his hands from hers.

  ‘Of course you have,’ she said. ‘Of course, my dear.’

  He ran down the stairs and called the servant up from the basement. He asked her to make her mistress some chicken soup and to take it in to her when he had gone. He avoided looking at the girl.

  It was now twenty to six. As he dressed he could hear Anne talking to herself. At such times she usually spoke bossily to Olivia, ordering her out into those faded gardens of Inchicore House.

  It doesn’t matter, he thought. Tragedy, though hard to contend with, was an affirmation of life. At that instant, brushing the shoulders of his best black coat, he could think of despair in such terms. There was still time for him to achieve something; time still for him to do his best work.

  Anne was asleep when he went in to say goodbye. Her arms were raised up on either side of her head and her mouth was open. He turned her on to her side in case she vomited.

  As soon as he climbed on to the rostrum in the Gymnasium he understood the business of the extra chairs. The first three rows were entirely filled with former pupils of the school. He recognised the Woodley brothers, Frank and Walter Besant, the Holroyd boy, George Hunter, Fraser, young Taunton, Daley’s son. Taunton, at fourteen, had climbed onto the roof and hurled stones at the drill sergeant. He had offered no excuse for his behaviour beyond claiming that the hot weather had affected him. Anne had said she was sure that it was Taunton who had caused the fire at the school. The Committee had wanted him flogged but had given way in the end. He seemed tame enough now, with his pince-nez, his watch chain and his little fluffy moustaches.

  There were some faces that Watson looked at perplexed, so changed had they become, and others whose eyes, staring up at him out of those altered, manly countenances, betrayed them instantly for the boys they once had been. He could not imagine what they were doing here in such numbers.

  The President, who was a hat manufacturer and only slightly more efficient than the late Mr Dalton, made the opening speech. The orations were delivered, the prizes given. The President was a cheroot addict, and though no one else would have thought it proper to light up in the presence of ladies he puffed his way through three hours. The air above the rostrum rolled blue with smoke. Mrs Rawlings, the wife of the chairman of the Committee, fanned herself with her chamois gloves. Old Dr Munford, finding himself in a bar parlour, had taken out his handkerchief and was clasping it to his nose.

  Watson thought of Anne. By now she would be out of bed and sitting in the dressing-room, in the dark, watching out of the back window for a sight of him. For a time she would be filled with remorse; if he delayed much longer she would feel self-pity. Anger would undoubtedly follow. He was glad that he had locked the library door. There had been a boy at St Elizabeth’s College, he remembered, who had come under suspicion of tampering with an exam paper. Though there was no positive proof of guilt, Davies, the Principal, had expelled him on the spot. Le Courtois and himself had put up a petition and gathered statements from senior boys, to no avail.

  He was thinking about his life at St Elizabeth’s, various pictures passing before his eyes – the sea breaking against the rocks, Le Courtois throwing up his arms and pretending to go under for the third and last time, a particular corner of the beach one rainy afternoon – when he became aware that the President was again on his feet, smiling and gesturing, not at Mrs Rawlings, whose moment of glory should have arrived, but at him. And then Matthews, the head boy, came up the steps of the rostrum without his bouquet of flowers, carrying instead an object shaped like a tray, loosely wrapped in tissue paper. From the hall came a tremendous scraping of chairs on the wooden floor. The old boys were rising to their feet and starting to clap. Even the smaller boys, sitting cross-legged at the front, were beating their fists against the base of the rostrum and cheering.

  The President, his bald head wreathed in smoke, held up his hand for silence. He said that it was his pleasant duty to make a further presentation, one which in his opinion was highly merited. For twenty-two years the Reverend John Selby Watson had occupied the post of head master at the school, and there were many here tonight, and still others out there in the world, who could bear witness to his scholarship, his patience and his devotion to the sacred task of education. He went on in this vein for some time, and when he had finished such a roar of approval came from the old boys, that, swayed by their enthusiasm the body of the audience rose too and for over a minute applauded the head master. During this tumult, Matthews, his face scarlet with excitement and undiagnosed fever, handed over the wrapped object. The tissue paper dropped away and a silver salver was uncovered, highly polished, and engraved. Watson, clutching the shining dish to himself like a breastplate, found he was near to tears. He had not suspected that he could feel such gratitude, nor take such delight in being appreciated.

  At last he too held up his hand – Mrs Rawlings noticed that he had both ink and blood on his fingers – and when the clapping had died away he began to make a speech. He said that it was obvious that the tide of change was sweeping in to erode the shores of education. There were some who believed this change was for the better and others who believed the opposite. Ultimately the position of Latin and Greek was imposed by History. We could no more say goodbye to Latin and replace it with Russian or Sanskrit than we could wipe out the History of Europe for the last two thousand years. He would not join in the controversy, he said, nor bring up the tired old argument that a boy’s mind was best trained by the instrument of Latin. For himself, to know Greek and to read the Tragedies was to begin to understand his own nature. The purpose of Tragedy was not to free one from pity or terror, nor to purge one by allowing the discharge of such feelings, but to bring one face to face with the awful truths of human existence. ‘Let us then,’ he said, ‘pursue these truths with our whole powers, and strive for eloquence, without which all nature would be mute, and all our acts deprived alike of present honour and commemoration among posterity; and let us aspire to the highest excellence, for, by this means, we shall attain the summit, or at least see many below us.’ He faltered, not sure whether he was hitting the right note, and looked down at the salver in his arms. He was dazzled by its brightness. ‘Greek,’ he said, ‘is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy. As to the learning of Latin,’ he concluded, ‘the point of it is simple. It is so that we can read Horace.’

  Afterwards he was convinced that Anne, crouching at the open window, must have heard the ovation they gave him.

  Henry Grey was shown a copy of the letter which had been sent on the 30th September, 1870, and affirmed that he had written it:

  Dear Sir

  In conformity with the annexed resolution, which was unanimously adopted at a meeting of the Committee last evening, I hereby give notice that they will not require your services after the expiration of the present term.

  I am, yours faithfully,

  Henry Grey. Secretary, Stockwell Grammar School.

  (Copy of resolution) That the Secretary be instructed to inform each of the present masters that owing to the continuous falling off in the number of pupils, and the consequent insufficiency of the income to meet the current expenditure, the Committee feel themselves most reluctantly compelled to give notice to each of them that their services will not be required after the expiration of the present term.

  Henry Grey said that Mr Watson had replied to the Committee on October 17th, 1870. The letter was read out as follows:

  Dear Sirs

  Your resolution has taken me greatly by surprise, as I had thought
that, considering the long time I have conducted the school,’ and the way in which I have constantly endeavoured to maintain its character and excellence, the Committee would have allowed me the courtesy of some communication with them, after which I might have, if necessary, tendered my resignation.

  I am shocked that the notice of dismissal was accompanied by no expression of concern, or any single word which might soften its intent.

  So far from any accusation of neglect, or failure of duty, having been brought against me, the Committee in July last congratulated the proprietors on the untiring exertions of the highly talented head master.

  I am at a loss to understand what it is I have done during the last few months to cause the Committee to withhold all confidence from me, and request that I should be allowed to tender my resignation.

  I am, yours faithfully, J.S. Watson.

  PART 3

  1870–1871

  He showed the letter of dismissal to anyone who would spare the time to read it – Wallace, Murdoch from King’s College, the Revd Mr Anderson at Herne Hill, colleagues at the Royal Society of Literature, even Mr Bush’s son, Fred. Each one professed to be as baffled by it as he was. He couldn’t forgive the Board for not taking him into their confidence. He knew as well as they that the school, once anchored in a quiet village and now adrift in a metropolis, was something of an anachronism. He knew better than they that the old order was changing and that a classical education was no longer essential to advancement in the world; but to cast him out, half way through the school year and in such an abrupt manner, was beyond belief. Did they think they were terminating the services of a lamp-lighter or a crossing-sweeper, that they could get rid of him in so few words?

  He still had to work the term out at the school, and this was the worst part of his humiliation. He patrolled the familiar corridors believing that he was part of a conspiracy, a practical joke almost, which might yet be explained to him.