The real truth, if I dare use such a phrase, was that I knew my own book was going off the rails, that the ‘fictional’ element wouldn’t wash, and that even the ‘true’ parts had suddenly become shaky as a result of what Dobbs kept telling me. The fact, for instance, that Molly was really quite well off. I remembered her as desperately poor (even the drinks tray was stocked because the officers used to turn up with at least one bottle between them) but managing by her own personality to shed round her a sense that her world was one of invaluable richness. This was an important factor in my picture of her, miraculous evidence for her creed that one could live one’s life on one’s own terms, rather than on the world’s.
On the other hand I merely ‘remembered’ her referring to Daisy as Dee-Dee, and yet Dobbs told me I had got that almost right. My fictions at this level seemed truer than my facts. In deciding to do what Dobbs asked me I suppose that unconsciously I was hoping to provide myself with enough similar solid details to prop up my tottering structure. Mind you, I did not then acknowledge that it was already a near-ruin—I seemed to myself to be enjoying what I wrote.
Even less consciously (though I am now more painfully aware of my motives at that level) I must have wanted to get back to the deer. There was one particular half-afternoon in which I had actually been attacked by a stag in rut. This was an episode—like the finding of Mr Wither’s body—which I could not be said ever to have forgotten but about which I never thought. It was like a known fact shut away in an unread book. I hadn’t really even thought of using it in my novel. I suppose I told myself that it didn’t fit in with my image of the deer, those tutelary spirits of what Paddery had meant to me, embodiments of wildness and freedom. But now, at a more sensible if less rational level, I was having to face the knowledge that wildness and freedom have their shadows in danger and suffering. The deer-like life that Molly could be said to have led must have caused a fair amount of chaos, and worse, in other people’s lives. So in that sense the episode of my being attacked by the stag could be said to have become proper to the novel, though this was not the reason I gave myself for writing about it. Dobbs’s request for more information about the Captain had triggered the memory, and only then had I realised that two longish encounters with him were linked with that afternoon, occasions on which he had momentarily exposed to my view glimpses of the creature that inhabited his baroque carapace. I got the whole lot done in two stints of writing and sent it off to Dobbs. In my covering letter I tried to adopt the attitude to the news about his health which I thought he would prefer—friendly concern, faith in his book and so on. I tried not to let the curious near-hysteria I felt show through. I don’t think I had any inkling myself why it mattered so much to me that Dobbs should not die before … not before he had finished his book, but I mine.
9
The summer holidays had almost finished the War, but not quite. It wasn’t so easy now; on half holidays the single football pitch involved almost a third of the school; the colder air and damper ground made ambushes and lying in wait less attractive tactics; and though The Man had extended bounds eastward along the lake to include the chestnut grove, and had thus opened new battlegrounds, the variations on campaigns, ruses and assaults were becoming exhausted. The hay forts had of course gone long ago.
Still there were fairly frequent skirmishes among a few shrilling enthusiasts, and occasionally for no good reason the whole school found itself in the mood and hostilities were resumed in earnest. On one such morning Paul came out, having missed most of break because of doing extra maths with Clumper Wither, and looked down over the battlefield. He had his gun in his hand, having heard the racket while he was working with Clumper (one of the juniors had come back from the holidays with a ricochet-whine, much easier to make convincing than the initial crack of a shot). He stopped at the edge of the gravel, hoping to see where a sudden charge from the flank might have best effect. A tang hung in the air like the smell of smoke as the chill of an almost-winter night was eased away by the sun. Paul’s skin, chilly too with long sitting, crawled and tingled in the mild warmth. The day was clear and golden, with trails of light mist along the surface of the lake. It was down there that the battle raged, over the yellow leaf-fall of the chestnut grove and in and out among the dark, ridged tree trunks. Too far for a charge, and in any case break must be almost over. Miss Penoyre, duty master this morning, was looking at her watch; the handbell stood on the gravel beside her. Paul let out a deliberately audible sigh, and she looked up.
‘Boys have all the fun,’ she said. She sounded angry about it.
‘Can I ring the bell?’
‘Three minutes. If I’d been a boy they’d have sent me away to school. You don’t know how lucky you are.’
‘You don’t know how lucky you are having an aunt like Miss Benison. You should see mine.’
I suppose so. I can remember laughing at her in my pram. But she’s got other sides. Look how beastly she is to Chris. What’s she got against him?’
Paul felt uncomfortable; there was a school rumour that Miss Penoyre and Mr Wither were in love, but this was just gossip, of no greater credibility than the long-standing myth of Matron’s unrequited passion for Hoofer Hutton. (A whole series of Matrons had filled that role.) It seemed to Paul at the time that his discomfort arose from the way Miss Penoyre was using Christian names. That was all right down at the conservatory, not up here … But there was more to it than that, a feeling that she was about to do or say something truly embarrassing, something more to do with Molly than Mr Wither, as if she was going to ask Paul to choose …
‘She’s only teasing,’ he said.
‘It’s never “only” with her. The more she laughs, the more she means it.’
‘Who means what?’ said the deep voice of the Captain, close behind them. One of his characteristics, much noticed by the boys, was his silent walk. He seemed to float, with his small feet merely trailing along the ground, as though his bulging torso were gas-filled almost to the point of weightlessness.
‘You were at Aunt Molly’s,’ said Miss Penoyre. ‘You heard her getting at poor Chris. What’s she got against him?’
The Captain gazed at her and nodded, accepting that Molly had so behaved.
‘I will consider the matter,’ he said
‘Oh, please …’
He nodded again, closing the subject, and his dark, red-rimmed eyes turned towards Paul, moving slowly over him and coming to rest at last on the gun. Though his look expressed neither comment nor question Paul felt a need to explain.
‘I thought there’d be time to have a go in the War, sir.’
‘Some for fear of censure,’ said the Captain. ‘Some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later.’
He wasn’t the sort of master you could please by making guesses at where a bit of poetry came from, and in any case Paul had no idea—wasn’t even sure it was poetry at all—but at the same time made an intuitive leap to what the words were about, and then, naturally, couldn’t resist showing that he’d done so.
‘My father fought in the real war,’ he said.
‘I don’t even know whether mine did or didn’t,’ said Miss Penoyre.
‘Mine got the MC,’ said Paul.
He put down his gun and reached for the bell, glancing up at Miss Penoyre for the signal to ring it. She wasn’t looking at him but at the Captain, smiling as if he amused her. Paul realised with surprise that in spite of her being so much more like one of the boys than a master she wasn’t afraid of the Captain. He might have been a large and friendly animal in her eyes, her guard-dog, only dangerous to other people.
‘Of course your father fought,’ said the Captain.
‘Did you know him too, sir?’ said Paul.
‘Too?’
‘Miss Benison did.’
You didn’t normally interrupt the Captain, but he had seemed to Paul to speak of his
father as if he was expecting some response, and then to react to Paul’s question with surprise. Now, however, he turned his huge head straight towards Paul and stared at him with sudden ferocity, revealing more clearly than Paul had ever seen it before what the boys had somehow instinctively known from the first, that there was something inside him far more dangerous and alarming than the normal run of schoolmaster could command. Even Stocky at his worst could only make you miserable. This power to make your heart leap to your throat and sweat break out all over your skin was something different in kind. The effect only lasted an instant before the Captain turned away again.
‘I think it is time for the bell, Miss Penoyre,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. But you will think what to do about Aunt Molly and Chris, won’t you?’
‘Ring the bell, Rogers.’
Gripping the glossy mahogany handle Paul swung the bell from side to side at knee-level. You had to get the rhythm right, stopping each stroke abruptly so that the clapper really slammed into the brass. It was quite hard work. After a dozen swings Paul looked up for the signal that he could stop, but the Captain had taken Miss Penoyre by the elbow and was leading her away from the centre of clamour. He said something. She stared at him and put her other hand to her mouth. A pinkness tinged her sallow cheeks, making her look excited but a bit frightened. Paul did half a dozen more good swings and put the bell down. He watched the War end with a half-hearted charge out of the trees against enemies who had already turned their backs and were trailing up the hayfìeld. The landscape still seemed full of a ghostly ringing.
The Captain was late for Extra Greek. Paul waited in the dust-smelling little room where he did these extra lessons with increasing nervousness. It wasn’t just that he knew he had somehow infuriated the Captain during break, in fact that didn’t worry him much, because experience had shown that the Captain could change mood quite unpredictably. On the whole Paul enjoyed his private sessions with the Captain, though they were very different from the dolphin-like plunge and skim on which Clumper Wither led him through the kindly waters of mathematics. The Captain belonged to colder oceans, a creature too large for you to make out his whole shape, let alone his intentions. Still, Paul found it satisfactory to have such an adult pay sole attention to him for fifty minutes. It made him feel that he mattered.
Today, though, there was a school match. Paul hated these. Luckily, now that petrol was rationed, only the School XI went to away matches, but for home fixtures everyone paraded form by form in the courtyard and then the form heads marched them out to the football pitch, where they were expected to stand yelling ‘Come on St Aidan’s!’ until the syllables were meaningless. After all that, the school nearly always lost. Because everyone in Schol except Paul, Higley and Dent ma. was either in the XI or a prae (praes looked after the visitors) Paul was due to head the procession, marching out his squad of two. The idea so disgusted him that on an impulse he had told Higley that he might be late, because of Extra Greek, and having done that he had made a sort of bet with himself: if the session with the Captain lasted long enough to cause him to miss the parade, he would go off on his own on a deer-stalk, and time it to reach the football pitch just before the match ended. Nobody was going to spot there was one less chanting boy there. It was this decision that made him nervous. Now that the Captain was late, and it seemed more and more of a possibility, he became steadily less sure that he could go through with it.
Coming in without explanation or apology, the Captain slid a sheet of paper on to the table Paul used as a desk. Instead of being one of the usual old Eton Schol papers it was four lines of Greek, written out in the Captain’s tiny, print-like script with the meanings of the difficult words listed below. The last of these words was ‘deer’.
‘It concerns a battle, and the defeat of a king,’ said the Captain, then turned and walked to the window where he stood, staring out. After ten minutes he came and looked over Paul’s shoulder at three false starts. With a silver propelling pencil he drew a series of curving arrows across the poem, charting connections from word to word.
‘Hello, they make a pattern,’ said Paul.
‘As the poet intended,’ said the Captain and returned to the window. Helped by the arrows Paul sorted out a story which seemed to him to make a pointless kind of sense.
‘Finished, sir.’
The Captain came over, his silent walk mildly ominous, and read the result.
‘The average examiner might consider that a tolerable attempt,’ he said. ‘I find it offensive. Consider. These lines were written by a man of intelligence, a man with a purpose. That they have survived over two thousand years suggests that he succeeded in his purpose. What do you think he was trying to do?’
‘Er … make fun of Philip, I suppose.’
‘To wound him, to hurt his pride, to lessen his soldiers’ trust in him. How?’
‘Oh, he ran like a deer!’
There was a change of emphasis in the rumour of school life, that varying mutter that seemed permanently to emanate from Long Passage. It rose slightly as people stopped doing whatever they’d been up to and began to get ready for the match. Paul stared at the four lines of Greek. He could have asked about Philip, got the Captain going on Alexander … he was afraid to try.
‘The note of gloating mockery is intentional,’ said the Captain. ‘This is a true war poem, much more so than something like O Valiant Hearts. The poet, a certain Alcaeus, understood about war. He saw the bodies sprawled among the rocks—unlike the hymnodist, whoever he may have been.’
‘Arkwright, sir.’
‘Your father would confirm what I say. I take it he met Miss Benison during the war, not after?’
‘Yes, sir. She nursed him.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘He’s dead, sir. When I was five.’
The Captain did not make any of the usual little mutters, really mostly embarrassment at having mentioned the subject. But though the noise from Long Passage could now definitely be interpreted as a general movement away towards the locker-room for macs and caps (compulsory for match-watching) he made no move to end the session.
‘How then did you discover your acquaintanceship with Miss Benison?’ he said. ‘Not through your mother, I imagine.’
As Paul started to explain he found his mind had made itself up. He would skip the match. Perhaps it was talking about Molly that did the trick, the knowledge that she would positively have approved of his rule-breaking. Perhaps it was the omen of being set a poem about deer to translate, perhaps something to do with the Captain’s interest. At any rate he began deliberately to spin the story out, going into detail, even though this involved talking about the strangeness of Daisy’s behaviour.
The Captain listened in silence, seeming to accept Paul’s right to speak about another adult in that fashion. Indeed when Paul finished—by which time the school noises were trampings and squeaks of command, coming via the window and thinned with the lack of indoor resonances—he went further. For a moment the whole adult conspiracy—that huge unspoken pact whereby the shortcomings of adults, even such men as Herr Hitler, were never acknowledged, let alone discussed, in the presence of children—vanished.
‘You believe Miss O’Connell is a madwoman?’ asked the Captain.
‘I don’t know, sir. She’s like … well, there’s a woman I know at home who drinks too much …’
‘Yes.’
‘And I suppose that’s why Miss Benison has to look after her.’
‘So it would seem.’
‘And Miss Penoyre helps.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I don’t think she likes it.’
For a moment Paul thought he must have triggered off the same rage he’d inexplicably provoked that morning. The atmosphere, almost the smell, of the little room seemed to change, become heavy and musky. Then he realised that this time he was not
the focus of this anger, if that was what it was.
‘She dislikes looking after Miss O’Connell?’ asked the Captain.
‘No … I mean not that specially. I suppose I’ve only seen them with people about. It might be the way Miss Benison teases everyone.’
‘Perhaps. I have suggested Mr Wither simply stops going to tea on Sunday.’
‘She’ll tease about that.’
‘The roster for duty master changes at half term. Mr Wither can take over from me on Sunday evenings, beginning next Sunday. I tell you this because Miss Benison is certain to ask you about it. All you need say is that the roster has changed. There is no reason why she should be given an excuse to distress Miss Penoyre.’
‘But she’s very fond of her. She often says so.’
‘No doubt. I understand that Mr Smith insists on your being accompanied back here on Sundays. Miss Penoyre will do that.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The Captain stood where he was, apparently brooding but making no move to go. It struck Paul that perhaps he too had spun the session out in order to avoid having to stand on the touch-line and watch boys galloping across muddy turf. If so, this was one of those conspiracies which you could spoil by letting on you knew it existed. Paul pretended to be studying the Greek poem. A picture came into his mind of a lot of men lying among hot black rocks, with blood all over their brass armour. Above them stood an enormous antlered stag.
From the distance, meaningless as the noise of waves on shingle, rose the cheering of boys. The match had begun. Without even a grunt of dismissal the Captain left the room.
Ten minutes later Paul leaned panting on his gun between two clumps of red-brown bracken. His whole skin crawled with nerves. He’d done it now. Paddery was out of sight behind the brow of the hill, and it was that moment, when the roof-top had vanished below the ridge, that had seemed to set the seal on Paul’s rule-breaking. The danger of being spotted had been far greater when he was slipping out round the garage block and then scurrying down to the cover of Lake Wood, but now he was actually standing on what seemed to him forbidden territory. He ought not to be here. If he were found cutting the match, it would mean loss of praes’ privs and at least one Sunday drill, but it wasn’t that sort of punishment that produced this peculiar mixture of excitement and dread. It was the knowledge that The Man, in fact the whole adult world—Mummy and Duncan and everybody—everybody except Molly Benison—would think this wicked.
Hindsight Page 10