Mr Campion's Fault

by Mike Ripley

  He reached Ash Grange just as a bell was ringing to signal the end of lunchtime and the first lessons of the afternoon. Celia Armitage met him at the school entrance and apologised profusely for the fact that Campion had missed the school dinner they had been keeping for him, though she was sure it could be warmed up.

  Mr Campion politely, but equally profusely, insisted that he was, despite tramping the length and depth of the village, still sated, though he could be easily pushed in the direction of a cup of tea as well as whichever classroom Perdita was rehearsing in.

  Mrs Armitage said both things were possible, though perhaps he would prefer a drop of something ‘stronger than tea’ in his tea.

  When Campion looked suitably confused, she explained thus: ‘Hilda Browne has invited herself along to poor Perdita’s rehearsal and I find her a lot easier to deal with if I’ve had a stiffener beforehand.’

  Mr Campion declined the offer, insisting that tea would be sufficient. It was a decision he was to regret within three minutes of meeting Helen of Troy.

  The rehearsal space occupied by the cast of Doctor Faustus – A Morality Tale With Music for Speech Day (Mr Campion had seen a Roneo-ed poster on the school notice board) was a first-floor classroom where all the desks and chairs had been pushed against the walls. A dozen or so boys in school uniform stood to one side, shuffling their feet as they studied texts, whispering to each other and pointing out of the window, doing everything possible to avoid looking directly across the room at the tall, plain and very angular middle-aged woman sitting primly on a chair, hands folded in her lap, her knees precisely together. She wore something long, opaque and diaphanous in a vivid shade of lime green.

  In the middle, Perdita stood as a Berlin Wall keeping the two warring cultures apart. She was wearing a crisp, very masculine white shirt and shiny blue trousers with wide bell-bottoms (which Mr Campion had been told by his wife were not ‘loon pants’) and her Cuban heels made sure she was not looked down upon by her more gangling pupils. She was holding a paperback edition of Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays and she had adopted her best ‘governess’ voice, as Rupert called it.

  Celia Armitage showed Mr Campion in, pulled out a chair for him and closed the door quietly as she withdrew. Mr Campion was left balancing a cup and saucer and trying not to look like a school inspector or a drama critic.

  ‘All right, let’s have Faustus out here, centre stage,’ Perdita ordered. ‘Come on, Roderick, I promise not to tell you to break a leg until opening night.’

  The boys laughed and the reason for their amusement became clear as Roderick Braithwaite limped towards Perdita with the aid of a black, silver-topped cane.

  ‘Now I need my Mephistophilis – come on, Banville, stand to – and also the Old Man.’ Perdita looked up from her text. ‘Who’s playing the Old Man?’

  A short boy with bright red hair raised a hand. ‘Atkinson, Miss,’ he said in a surprisingly deep voice, ‘but I’m not terribly sure who the Old Man’s supposed to be. He just seems to come and go without rhyme or reason.’

  ‘It’s a crucial role, Atkinson,’ said Perdita gently. ‘Earlier in the play we have the Good and the Evil Angels, which are sort of the two halves of Faustus’ conscience. I think they’ve been cut from our version, which makes the Old Man even more important, because when Faustus is tempted by Helen of Troy it’s the Old Man – an allegorical figure – who begs him to give up “this damned art” because he will lose his soul. The Old Man is the voice of Christianity. He’s the one who believes in God’s grace – that God will save even the worst sinners, but Faustus rejects him and the Old Man gets chased away by devils.’

  The ginger-haired Atkinson looked far from convinced but stepped forward anyway.

  ‘And I need my two Scholars. I know it says three in the text, but we’ve only got room for two. Right, we’ll go from where Mephistophilis escorts Helen across the stage.’

  ‘Do I have to, Miss?’ Banville whined.

  ‘Yes, you jolly well do!’ hissed Perdita.

  Campion’s eyes flashed towards the woman opposite but her expression and demeanour had not flickered.

  ‘Now there will be music throughout this part of the scene, so it’s rather like a beauty pageant where the contestants walk down the cat walk,’ she continued in directorial mode. ‘As long as nobody trips over their own feet, this should go quite smoothly. So, Faustus is here with the two Scholars, Mephistophilis brings Helen from Stage Right to Stage Left and then the Old Man comes in from Stage Right. Got that?’

  The boys around her nodded as one but Perdita had to jerk her head dramatically towards the woman in green to prompt Mephistophilis into action.

  The boy’s movements reminded Mr Campion of another Tudor dramatist’s description of an unwilling schoolboy creeping like a snail. His lack of enthusiasm seemed to go unnoticed by his acting partner, who rose to her feet – rather large feet, Campion noticed – with imperious grace. Even in flat-heeled shoes, she towered over the quivering Mephistophilis who nervously extended an arm to help guide her.

  Regally, she placed the flat of her right hand on the offered forearm and began to slide in stately fashion across the classroom floor at iceberg pace, dragging the reluctant servant of Lucifer with her.

  ‘Now imagine music playing as Helen passes over the stage,’ Perdita directed the rest of the cast who were watching the lime-green apparition wide-eyed. ‘Music, music, music … Faustus, imagine you’re showing off to the two Scholars. You’re saying “Look what I can do” and the Scholars are impressed, but the Old Man – that’s you, Atkinson – you see this is all going to end in tears and you plead with Faustus to “leave this damned art”.’

  Perdita looked up from her text to see that the lime-green galleon was still proceeding at funereal pace, clearly considerably behind her directorial timetable.

  ‘Music … music … music …’ vamped Perdita, ‘and then Helen is offstage but Mephistophilis comes back centre.’

  From the back of the room, Mr Campion heard his daughter-in-law’s slow exhalation and saw her knuckles whiten as she gripped her copy of the text until Helen finally made it to her appointed destination. (She could almost have made it to Troy by now, Campion thought.)

  Perdita, like all good field commanders, improvised. ‘Tell you what, chaps, let’s skip to the end of the scene and Helen’s second appearance – the famous one. That way we won’t have to delay anyone who might want to get away. So I need Mephistophilis and Faustus front and centre and halfway through, as Faustus says “all is dross that is not Helena”, that’s the cue for the Old Man to come in with an expression of sadness and disapproval. Can you manage that, Atkinson?’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ said the red-haired boy, mugging an expression which resembled gastric pain.

  ‘Are you sure you can manage to look old, Old Man?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss, my mother’s going to put talcum powder in my hair.’

  ‘That should do it,’ Perdita said cheerfully. ‘Now, places. Miss Browne, your cue is Mephistophilis here saying “twinkling of an eye” then you progress across the stage as Faustus admires “the face that launched a thousand ships”. But remember, Helen, you have to clear stage right before Faustus gets to “thou shalt be my paramour”.’

  A barely suppressed giggle ran through the boys and was curtailed by a severe look from Perdita, who then said, with a deep sigh of resignation ‘Right then, in your own time, Miss Browne …’

  SIXTEEN

  All is Dross

  ‘It’s awfully kind of you to give me a lift home and in such a nice car,’ said Helen of Troy, settling herself and a large black patent leather handbag in the Jaguar’s passenger seat. ‘I hope I’m not taking you out of your way.’

  Mr Campion was driving in exactly the opposite direction to the one he would have taken to return to his hotel in Huddersfield, but he reasoned that a few shillings’ worth of petrol and an hour of his time were worth their weight in gold when it came to pu
rchasing Perdita’s peace of mind.

  ‘Not at all,’ he lied smoothly, ‘but you’ll have to act as navigator as I don’t know the roads hereabouts. We are pointed towards Wakefield, which I believe is the right direction.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t go wrong, this is the main road. We live in Lupset, which is just before you get to Wakefield.’

  Campion guessed that his passenger had trouble saying the word ‘suburb’ but was far from reluctant to volunteer other information.

  ‘When I say “we” I of course mean my late brother, Bertram,’ said Hilda Browne. ‘He left me the house, though it’s probably too big for a single lady and it is very inconvenient without Bertie’s car. I had to sell it. I don’t drive, you see, and the cash came in useful when I had to cover his funeral expenses. I may have to sell the house as well, but goodness knows what I’ll do with all Bertie’s books and papers. He was a big collector of old maps and plans, you know.’

  ‘His death must have come as a terrible shock,’ said Mr Campion sympathetically.

  ‘Well of course it was. Bertie was no age. I mean, forty-five is no age, is it? He was my older brother, of course, and I always thought he would be the first of us to go, but not run over like that by a drunk driver – well, he must have been drunk, mustn’t he? If he’d fallen down a mineshaft I wouldn’t have been at all surprised, but a road accident …’

  ‘What an ex—’ Campion checked himself and then finessed his thought, ‘extremely imaginative concept. Was that a premonition? About the mineshaft, I mean.’

  ‘Premonition? You mean like in a dream? No, nothing like that, it was just that Bertie was always rummaging around the pits. Fascinated by them he was, and if he’d fallen down one of the old shafts and broken his neck I wouldn’t have turned a hair.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Campion gently, braking to allow a Yorkshire Traction double-decker to pull out into the road ahead, ‘I must have fortune telling on the brain. You see, I visited the local witch this morning.’

  ‘Ivy Neal? That old hag?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think she’s that old.’

  Campion kept his eyes on the twisting road, though he could feel the heat of Hilda Browne’s stare. She may not have had a face to launch ships but he suspected her glare to be as powerful as a laser beam.

  ‘Nowadays, compared to myself, everyone seems so very young,’ he said, and the atmosphere in the Jaguar softened. ‘I suspect Ivy has an interesting history. Do you know her well?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ snorted Hilda. ‘I wouldn’t like it thought I was socially acquainted with a woman like Ivy Neal! I only spoke to her once – to be polite, you understand – and that was when she took me by surprise when I ran into her at my charity work in Wakefield. I never expected to see her there, doing good works like decent people.’

  Mr Campion gently bit his bottom lip to prevent the outburst of anger he felt rising inside him like hot lava. ‘I think Ivy has had a bit of a harsh life,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s different for men,’ said Hilda, changing tack, now with a coy, little girl voice. ‘Men get more distinguished as they age but women have to struggle or they just fade. It is very easy just to fade away, especially when they live alone.’

  Mr Campion was shrewd enough to realize that Miss Browne was no longer talking about Ivy Neal and he felt guilty at finding the woman’s simpering as repellent as her snobbery. He brusquely changed the subject. ‘I understand that Bertram was a Sapper, so I suppose his interest in mines and engineering was perfectly logical.’

  ‘Oh he was very proud of his time in the Royal Engineers.’ Campion winced at the emphasis the woman put on ‘Royal’. ‘I wish he’d stayed in the army in many ways as he could have risen to great heights, but he met this girl near the end of the war. Hungarian and Jewish, can you believe? It didn’t come to anything, though I’m sure she’d have wanted it to, but she got killed just like he did, in a road accident. Of course, hers was years ago.’

  ‘How terrible for the poor chap. But surely an experience like that would have made him more careful when walking along an unlit road at night …?’ Campion suggested.

  ‘You clearly didn’t know Bertie. If he had something on his mind he might as well have been away with the fairies. He’d get an idea in his head about a bit of pit history and then he’d spend hours in that working men’s club.’ Once again there was disdain in the woman’s voice and Campion marvelled at the amount of spite which could be contained in such a frail shell. ‘He used to hang around with the colliery men and not care who saw him. He even’ – she lowered her voice as if in a confessional – ‘climbed to the top of that awful Grange Ash muck stack with the dreadful Arthur Exley. Acting like a pair of Boy Scouts going mountaineering they were, in full view of everybody and anybody. Goodness knows what the school thought of it.’

  ‘Why should the school object to a bit of extra-curricular mountaineering?’ Campion asked, secretly thinking it sounded quite a jape.

  ‘Being seen with somebody like Exley couldn’t be good for Bertie’s position. I mean, what would the other staff think – or the parents of the boys?’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘Arthur Exley is nothing short of a communist, dedicated to destroying everything Ash Grange teaches and stands for!’ growled Hilda.

  Campion glanced at the profile of that sharp and snarling face. She was staring straight ahead through the Jaguar’s windscreen as if trying to spot Red Guards waiting in ambush.

  ‘Oh, I hardly think climbing the north face of a muck stack together is a treasonable offence or be seen as immoral,’ said Campion. ‘Unless, of course, it was the devilish Exley taking your brother up to a high place in order to tempt him into selling his soul to socialism. I don’t believe that for a minute, though such a scenario might have led to a discussion on the plot of Doctor Faustus.’

  Campion had not intended to switch the conversation away from Hilda’s social and political hobby-horses, at least not quite so abruptly, but he had inadvertently stumbled upon the one topic which was guaranteed to light the woman’s blue – and very short – touch paper.

  ‘Hah!’ snorted Hilda, so violently that Campion tightened his grip on the wood-rimmed steering wheel. ‘Even putting that little Hitler Exley in charge of the music is not going to stop the production! Bertie promised me I could play Helen and despite their attempts at sabotage, I will. I insist on performing as a tribute to Bertie’s vision. I will not betray his memory!’

  Mr Campion drew in a deep breath through his nose, then smiled beatifically at his passenger, who had taken a handkerchief from the handbag balanced on her bony lap and proceeded to strangle it. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ he asked innocently.

  Perdita decided she owed her father-in-law a great big kiss, her undying love and her unwavering devotion for so tactfully removing Hilda Browne from the rehearsal. The mood in the room had lightened instantly and the boys had settled down and concentrated on the task in hand. The cherubic Watson was doing his best to look fearsome as Lucifer demanding Faustus’ soul; Banville was actually rather good as a sneering Mephistophilis, especially when pointing out that fools who laugh on earth are destined to weep in hell; and young Atkinson was making a good fist of displaying despair.

  Even though she later said it herself, Perdita was the best actor in that room by a country mile for her performance as a drama teacher determined not to be derailed from her appointed task by a deranged Helen of Troy who was making such a meal of a non-speaking part which consisted of a couple of promenades across the stage.

  In her directorial role, Perdita put the boys through their paces and reassured herself that they at least knew their lines, even if two of them seemed unsure of when to deliver them and one felt confident enough to try and improve on them. All in all, she felt pleased with the performance of her little troupe and morale was high now that Hilda had gone. She felt confident that her ‘show’ – she was loathe to call it a play
– would amuse if not enlighten its intended audience, for even though the text had been violently pruned, the music of the Denby Ash brass band contingent would plaster over the many cracks.

  ‘Before you shoot off, we ought to talk about costumes,’ she said as the boys were collecting their bags and coats in anticipation of the school bell. ‘What did Mr Browne have in mind?’

  ‘He always left all that to Daffers,’ said Roderick, leaning two-handed on his walking cane as if he was about to break into ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’. When he saw the look of confusion on Perdita’s face, he added: ‘Oh, sorry Miss, I meant Miss Cawthorne. She always does costumes and make-up for school productions.’

  ‘I see,’ said Perdita, thinking that if the boys called Daphne ‘Daffers’, what did they call her? ‘And what has she suggested?’

  ‘That I should have horns!’ Mephistophilis yelped enthusiastically. ‘Not big ones like a cow or a water buffalo but small, nubby ones, and they should be red so they look really evil.’

  ‘Don’t listen to Banville, Miss,’ Roderick intervened diplomatically, ‘he’s having you on. Miss Cawthorne said no such thing because she won’t have anything to do with this play.’

  ‘She thinks it’s evil,’ said her baby-faced Lucifer knowingly. ‘She’s very religious.’

  ‘So we’ve got just over a week to go and nobody has a costume?’

  ‘Only Helen of Troy,’ said Roderick without a trace of irony. ‘She has very firm ideas on what she’ll be wearing.’

  ‘I was afraid of that,’ Perdita muttered under her breath, but to her cast she only showed a smiling, confident face.

  ‘Right then, we improvise. Atkinson, as you’re the Old Man, you’ll dress as an old man – big overcoat, scarf and a flat cap. Have you got a grandfather you can borrow from?’

  The very young old man said that he had.

  ‘Good, now the rest of you will all be scholars.’

  ‘Scholars, Miss?’

  ‘I know it’s casting against type in your case, Banville,’ said Perdita coolly, ‘but this is a play about a scholar who gets above himself, so I’m going to ask the headmaster if we can borrow the gowns your teachers wear. Underneath I want grey pullovers, dark trousers and your school shoes, but make sure they’re polished. And yes, Mephistophilis, I’m looking at you.’