A Treasonable Growth

by Dr Ronald Blythe

  Conversely, a note from Quennie—you know, brief, smart and Italianate. Everybody says, ‘what beautiful handwriting your brother has …’ Of course he has. Everything Quentin does has to be beautiful; it’s really rather horrible. For instance he enquires, quite beautifully, ‘what did happen to your poor Mr M’Tooley? The Times account is so sketchy.’ You may have noticed how Quennie reads a paper; like someone taking a dose of salts. He gulps it all down, then shakes because it’s so beastly! Pretends he isn’t a bit interested in Sir P. ‘Have you done your dusting at Sheldon? I’ve just got hold of Miss Trembath’s Revenge and, my dear, it’s so boring. The utterest bosh, not to say pastiche.’ I couldn’t disagree because I haven’t managed to read this recent-ish Abbott, but Quennie can’t be quite right because D. MacCarthy was tremendously praising. Talking of reading, Mummie has just sent me a thing called Gone with the Wind and I can’t put it down, as they say. Nor for that matter can I pick it up—not without bracing myself. It’s ten million words long at least. Good though. You’d like it.

  Tomorrow to the Corn Exchange to learn how to fit gas masks. Bateson’s supposed to be coming with me. He’s always rather fascinated by this sort of thing. I’m not, needless to say.

  Don’t forget, don’t be conclusive about anything in this letter until we have talked. Thursday week, I think, but I’ll let you know.

  Bestest love,

  Richard.

  14

  IT must have been in March that people whose duties in the world were of the most ordinary kind became finally convinced that a time limit had been set even upon ordinariness. The days were tightening up. However there was a quite frightening absence of despair, and history will carry the curious imprint of a civilized continent observing with a fatalistic leisureliness the unhurried protocol of a magnificent summer. The spring, too, was glorious. There was a correctness, a rightness in every flowering day, in the way the swallows swung in dark arpeggios all along the telegraph wires, in the prolific pear blossom and in the blameless skies. There was, everywhere, a dogged determination to be graceful, to enjoy the current hour and to cock a summery snook at Nemesis. Fairytale state visits were arranged. The Lebruns, endearingly stolid and looking like the proprietors of a thoroughly-recommended family hotel, arrived in London to drive in carriages with the King and Queen to Covent Garden, where Constant Lambert conducted The Sleeping Princess. The King and Queen fulfilled to perfection their mannered rôle and, seen against the politicians and the dictators, were like Hilliard figures who had somehow wandered into a Breughel beanfeast. They assumed a vivid quintessence of human dignity and contrived to be prim and brilliant, urbane and gay all at the same instant. While Hitler, who was fifty, was identifying himself with the image of Alexander, these two small glittering figures were forced to carry the hopefulness of half the world.

  Paris, Prague, London and Rome had never looked so beautiful. Even Berlin, perennially festooned as it was with snaking black banners, presenting a neo-Edwardian vista along the banks of the Spree which was not without its charm. It hardly ever rained. People danced a good deal. There was a positive attitude to pleasure, yet no wildness, no hedonism. Perhaps there was an elegant fatalism like this when the legions withdrew. Perhaps there was the same kind of thankfulness then when a day closed without a glimpse of the hurrying horde.

  The Government did all they could with what they had, and nobody suspected how little that was. The tension had a peculiar effect on the weather. It was warm blue and gold for day after day, but however hot it became, the mood for the whole year was that of a fine autumn. Melancholy was seeded by the sunshine and crept gently into every action.

  Mrs Crawford, who all through March had been getting more and more agitated by the way things were going, decided on the second of April that she was better and would get up. She took great care to make it clear that it was a feeling of duty and not any great improvement in her health which allowed her to do this. Her first action was to look out the little inlaid box in which she had stowed away her V.A.D. insignia in 1919. The badges and clips and epaulet things were now heaped on the tray on her dressing-table. She fondled them as lovingly as other women might fondle pearls. All the newspapers were spread open at the Bip Pares kind of map which has pincer arrows and ominous shading. Mr Yockery found it a terrible trial to have his Crockford-y gossip buried under appallingly well-informed explanations of the Polish Corridor, Memel, the strategic importance of Tirana and other such information. Smirking feebly to excuse his inattention, he turned his thoughts to such genuinely important things as whether the re-establishment of pre-Reformation mensae was really a good policy, or whether the Faculty ought to discourage the practice; whether the porch roof was worth re-crenellating, or whether it might crumble into the responsibility of his successor. All the A.R.P. pamphlets, the government white-papers etcetera which Mrs Crawford passed on to him, he thrust straight into the tortoise-stove in the vestry.

  Mrs Crawford had put on a good deal of weight in the nine weeks she had been in bed, but other than this she was much her old self. Her skin had tightened and was a polished dull-rose colour. Her eyes swam brightly through one or other of her lorgnettes. Hibble, ever quick to appreciate the changing conditions of her employment, now began to hover behind Mrs Crawford like a cringing A.D.C.

  *

  Miss Bellingham on the other hand, now that there was not the least possible doubt of there being a war, shrank and decayed visibly. ‘I have come to the end of Time’, she thought as the international fears multiplied. And this was true indeed where her world was concerned. Limping on for twenty or so years after its first dreadful bludgeoning, it was now to receive its coup de grâce. The sheer certainty was too much for her. Somehow she’d dragged herself on through the poor crippled decades of the twenties and thirties, hanging on grimly to what she believed in, the tatters and scantlings of her culture. But now that even these were to be swept away she felt she had no energy left to even contemplate the bravest of brave new worlds. She stopped listening to the news on the London Regional programme and asked that the Manchester Guardian should no longer be brought up to her. And Mr Winsley, watchful as a pullet, noted dismally that the old gleam of interest, not to say interference, no longer pierced through the grey cataracts of her vision. Her eyes would follow him as he fidgeted about her room. On and on he would elaborate, plans, plans, plans. And it would always end up with her saying, ‘Do what you like. For God’s sake, Caddie, do what you like!’

  ‘I don’t think you even try to listen,’ he accused her wrathfully one day, after he had dwelt at length on his pet theme of having only two houses in the School, and so making it unnecessary for them to appoint a successor to Mr M’Tooley, and hence saving a clear three hundred pounds.

  ‘I’m certainly not hanging on your lips, Caddie, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Then you really don’t have any objection to young Brand being put in charge of Montessori and Bloomfield?—Incidentally, we shall have to drop one name. I suppose it will have to be Bloomfield. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s more what does Mr Brand think, isn’t it?’

  She jabbed away at her hair provokingly.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Brand at this stage is it?’

  ‘How you snap, Caddie,’ Miss Bellingham said. ‘You are getting a snapper! And you’re looking awful. Don’t you get your sleep?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said furiously. ‘Please, Freda; can’t you just let me know what you really think about all this? It’s really most frightfully important.’

  At this Miss Bellingham released her broad dark smile and let the seconds tick themselves away before she replied. When the silence had been stretched to the limit of Mr Winsley’s exasperation, she said, ‘He won’t do.’ She said it quite simply, enjoying the confusion three such small words set up.

  Mr Winsley tilted his pallid, naked face until his eyes lost focus in their bewilderment. Then he grew as indignant as he could be. Memo
ries of earlier tussles came back to him, and of little victories in which he had worsted her. Why should she be making it difficult for him now? What was her game? She hadn’t raised the least objection for instance when he’d switched all the classrooms round—and he’d known the time when it would have been as much as anyone’s life was worth just to shift a desk. Then it was only last week that she’d ordered him not to bring the accounts up to her, but to get on with them himself. If she was willing to trust him that far, why should she mind him calling Brand a housemaster, particularly when she knew the title meant absolutely nothing anyway.

  ‘He’s not—not good enough? Is that what you mean?’

  She pretended to consider. ‘Not really. Although it’s not his actual worth which I’m taking into account.’

  ‘What then?’ He tugged one of the buttony heart-shaped chairs round and crouched down on it. I shall have to keep calm, he was telling himself. Perfectly, perfectly calm. There’d been precedent enough for her obstinacy before, Heaven knew! He opened his fingers in a fan. ‘Take the pros,’ he said. ‘One—’ He tucked in his thumb.

  ‘Start with the cons,’ Miss Bellingham demanded. She held up her own hand and it fluttered weakly like a rag. ‘One. He’s too young—miles too young!’

  ‘M’Tooley was only twenty—’

  ‘Get Desmond out of your head, Caddie. If you’ll forgive my saying so, working on comparisons has always been your greatest mistake.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mr Winsley said, pointedly not taking offence. ‘First his age. Brand is twenty-four, that is young I agree. And he’s not brilliant. I agree again. But there is one very important thing we haven’t mentioned. The boy can teach. I’ve watched him. I know.’

  She waggled her head with insulting tolerance—the more so as she watched him trying to assert himself. She knew he recognised this aspect of her condescension, and that he had even found it flattering once. It was her technique of demoting people of their standing—particularly the standing they had in their own eyes—and sending them back to being gauchely charming creatures without a mind of their own. Mr Winsley fought to retain his dignity.

  ‘Listen, Freda,’—fearing to sound over-peremptory, he had added her name as an afterthought—‘look at it this way. We can go on with the boarders. You’ve said so yourself. But it isn’t worth it, so wouldn’t it be best to limit the intake to forty say—and only of prep age—then we could make up two houses—’

  ‘Why two with only forty boys?’

  ‘Competition. They would create a proper rivalry; some sort of loyalty pole …’

  He was interrupted by a gust of her rough unobstructed mirth. ‘Loyalty pole!’ she shouted. ‘Oh, Caddie, you are a funny boy!’

  He had been rather proud of this term—he’d discovered it in The Times Educational Supplement, although it had settled long enough in his subconscious for him to regard it as his own—so now he was extraordinarily angry. ‘You don’t care about Copdock any more,’ he accused her bitterly.

  ‘How right you are,’ Miss Bellingham declared. ‘You’re absolutely right, although we won’t go into all that now. Let me see, it’s Mr Brand we’re discussing, isn’t it?’ She swung her eyes up to meet his, a gesture which in a young and beautiful woman would have been irresistible, but coming as it did from her, had about the same effect as if he’d got the glad-eye from a mummy. ‘But before we go on, you really must understand, Caddie, I don’t hate Copdock. Only a fool would hate something which had claimed the best part of their life. It would be too defeating. Oh, I am disappointed! I don’t deny that. But even my disappointment’s an historical affair. We don’t have to kid ourselves about that surely! But, Mr Brand. Let’s deal with him. How shall you treat him when I am dead—is that it? Next year, I take it, you’ll be standing over my grave in the municipal cemetery whining, “Please, Freda, we want four dozen pencils from Rowney’s and do you mind if we change Montessori back to Bloomfield because we’re fightng the Italians”.’

  ‘Freda, please …’

  ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘Mr Brand—although I actually call him Richard. There are quite a dozen good reasons why you shouldn’t pin your hopes to Dick Brand.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me that he’ll be called-up.’

  ‘I wasn’t, but he will. But can’t you think of another reason?’

  He blinked at her with his colourless uncomprehending eyes.

  ‘You’re not the only bidder, Caddie—Surely you don’t think that?’

  He pretended to her playfulness. ‘I know! he’s been offered some other job. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re getting warm. Pauly wants him.’

  ‘What—?’

  ‘Ah, so I have surprised you! Well haven’t you ever heard of an amanuensis? They’re so hard to come by it seems. They have to be more than a typist and less than a friend. Well, what do you say? Don’t you think our Mr Brand is just the—ticket?’

  Mr Winsley made small helpless gestures with his hands and rocked on the balls of his feet. ‘Freda,’ he said when he could, ‘Freda, we have just got to get all this straight. Aren’t we each looking at Copdock from different angles? Mine is that the School has a future. Yours seems to be that it has proved to be a failure.’

  ‘Thank you, Caddie.’

  ‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I always did believe in you—never forget it. I have believed in you even more than you have believed in yourself. It is important to remember this,’ he scolded, ‘because it makes all the difference. You may, in your present mood of self-depreciation—I can’t call it humility, Freda, because you know it wouldn’t be true—you may think it right and proper to sit in this room and shrug your shoulders at your life’s work. At our life’s work, Freda! But you seem to forget the triumphs …’

  He was about to catalogue these when she stayed him with a small forlorn gesture.

  ‘Caddie, please; no speechifying. And while we’re about it, no diversions either. Just let’s be reasonable. Pauly’s home. For good. He won’t go off again, that side of it is all over. And he’s obviously got to have some kind of secretary and he’s met Richard and got used to him, and they get on fine together, so why should we be unreasonable! Pauly says how about two-fifty and his keep, and I say perfect. And you would too, except you’re too damn miserable to say anything. Also I’m not so sure the young man is cut out for schoolmastering anyway—in spite of what you think. If you’re really set on rejuvenating Copdock the first thing you’ll have to do is get hold of some qualified staff. Even the ironmongers will demand that. And while you’re about it you’d better get old-ish men, because, whatever you say, there is going to be a war, then Bateson will go and what will poor Caddie do then, poor thing!’

  Mr Winsley flopped back against his chair, drew his trousers up and showed black socks and porridge-coloured pants, spread his hands over his knees in the manner of someone making small headway with a difficult child, and said.

  ‘Look, Freda, Let’s put it this way. You—and I don’t wish to sound presumptuous—you have made up your mind about the war. I haven’t. So far as I am concerned it is just your latest and and worst hypothesis, although we’ll allow it, if only for the sake of argument. Well, there’s a war. So what? Is the Government going to wreck the educational system of the country by grabbing all the schoolmasters? Of course not. There will be deferments. Bateson will go—there has never been any doubt about that—but Brand will be sure to be deferred. Freda, do try and understand; I need Brand. You point out that he is unqualified. Well I’ve thought of all that. I’ve even done something about it. Canon Ribbs has been more than helpful. He’s willing to coach Brand privately through an external degree.

  ‘Is he. And what does Brand say?’

  ‘He’ll be delighted naturally.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she crowed. ‘But you haven’t asked him?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘And this is what you would like me to tell Pauly?’

>   Mr Winsley looked relieved. ‘It is the truth after all. Sir Paul is sure to understand.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘But you’ve got to explain, Freda.’

  ‘Why have I “got” to do anything?’

  He jumped to his feet. His lips worked, but no words came. His face grew white and damp as it always did when he was in a passion, and when at last he could speak he found he was almost shouting. Miss Bellingham put her hands to her ears, a roguish gesture she had correctly assumed he would find irritating.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you explain to Sir Paul?’ he demanded. ‘Just why shouldn’t you! Why should I stand in this room listening to you being frivolous about things to which we have devoted our entire lives!’

  ‘Frivolous …?’ she repeated slowly, so that the word carried a ribbon sound. ‘How very strange! Speaking for myself, I can hardly think of a time when I was less frivolous.’ She rocked her flaring white head to and fro, saddened, though not by his rage. ‘And another thing,’ she went on, ‘just because I don’t talk about it I don’t want you to go away thinking that poor Dessy’s dying was a little matter to me. A sort of disaster en passant. I felt it, Caddie. Horribly, truly; I felt it. I still do. Do you know why poor Dessy died? Shall I tell you? You think he was smothered in the gas, don’t you! No, Caddie. Desmond M’Tooley was smothered by the overwhelming realisation of his own stagnation. Sometimes, Caddie, as I sit up here in this room—my nurse’s room it was—I think I can smell the stench which comes from the dissolution of all our intentions. Fine intentions, Caddie—or have you forgotten? No matter. I write letters, I open books, I search for Brahms on the wireless. Sometimes I drink—though not as I used to in the old days. And why? Just to stave off the corruption, Caddie—that’s all.’