Nobody really resented Paddy’s chauvinism. By then it was an accepted fact of the Bamfylde scene, particularly as it was generally known Paddy’s father had been badly wounded serving with the Munsters, in France. But on this particular afternoon Lower Fourth banter over-reached itself and Paddy was collared and thrust into the Big School dust-hole, a relic of the Victorian era, that still absorbed dust and rubbish under the rostrum and was reached by a small trap door.
They got him down there easily enough, egged on by Bickford, Rigby, and several other members of The Lump, but their high spirits turned to panic when Paddy re-emerged via a wormeaten section of wainscoting flourishing a large Smith and Wesson revolver, that he used to corner all but one of his persecutors, yelling that he would show them that one Irishman was the equal of a dozen Englishmen.
Half-mad with fright, Bickford and his associates were backed the full length of Big School but Rigby managed to slip away, dashing into the quad and flinging himself upon David, who happened to be crossing the quad on his way to the bandroom.
‘Please, sir, come quickly, sir! He’ll shoot ‘em all, sir! He’s in there now, with a damn great gun. Clean off his rocker, sir…!’ and David hurried in the direction indicated, too late to rescue the hostages but in time to see them herded over the slushy ground in the direction of the swimming pool. He ran after them, a crowd of whipping boys in his wake, but seeing Boyer, now a Sixth Former and trainee prefect, he shouted to him to keep the others back.
He was twenty yards short of the cricket pavilion when he heard a confused outcry, terminated by a series of splashes, and when he burst into the enclosure there stood McNaughton, enjoying the prospect of Bickford and five of his cronies floundering in the deep end.
He walked up to the boy with his hand extended and McNaughton, breathless and grinning, lobbed the revolver in his direction. He caught it and saw at a glance that it was far from being a lethal weapon. It was hammerless and corroded by rust, the relic, no doubt, of a discarded war issue rescued from a rubbish dump.
‘What the devil possessed you to play such a tomfool trick?’ he demanded, and McNaughton said, cheerfully, ‘I had to do something, sir. There’s a limit to the ragging a man can take. I’ll take a beating and no complaints at all sir. It was worth it, to see ‘em cooling off in there, and this no weather at all for a swim, sir!’
He snapped, ‘Wait here, McNaughton, I’ll deal with you in a moment,’ and leaving the boy by the firing platforms of the miniature range he hurried down to the bedraggled group climbing out of the pool and looking, he thought, extraordinarily foolish as they shook the water from their clothes.
Bickford said, breathlessly, ‘He’s raving mad, sir! He would have drilled us if we hadn’t done what he said and jumped…’ but David said, holding up the rusting antique, ‘With this?’ and the pistol passed from hand to hand with cries of indignation. Bickford said, uncertainly, ‘He kept telling us it was loaded, sir. He said he’d brought it back from Dublin, and kept it specially for us. We didn’t get a chance to get a close look at it. It’s… it’s a real one, isn’t it, sir?’
‘It was. About the time of the Phoenix Park murders over there. Run on back, strip off and give yourselves a good rub down. Then go down to the kitchen and tell Ned Priddis I said you were to have a pint of hot cocoa apiece. Off with you and don’t hang about,’ and they went, making a cautious circle round the impassive McNaughton as they filed through the gate.
He sauntered back, balancing the weapon in his hand and said, curiously, ‘Where did you find this McNaughton? And how did it come to be so handy in that dust-hole?’
‘I’ve had it since I was a kid, sir. I found it on a Liffey dump years ago and brought it back after last hols.’
‘Why, exactly?’
McNaughton hesitated. ‘Nothing to do with them. The Black and Tans were making house-to-house searches at the time. I didn’t want to give them an excuse to shoot the Governor. Even an antique like that could cause trouble over there, sir.’
‘Ah, so I’ve heard,’ David said, and the boy looked at him carefully, as though trying to decide whether the remark was ironic or conciliatory. He said, finally, ‘My people are neutral actually. My Governor fought for the British and won the M.C. at Cambrai,’ and then, defiantly, ‘But the Tans were right bastards, sir!’
‘Do you really feel steamed up about asses like Bickford and Rigby?’
‘Och, no, sir. Bull Bickford’s dim, but there’s nothing personal, sir. And the others, well, they just go along. It all began as a lark, sir.’
‘But got out of hand?’
‘Well, yes, sir. But like I said, they asked for it, so they did.’ Then, doggedly, ‘I’ll shake hands, sir, if Bull and the others will, but there’s sure to be a rare shindig now. It’ll be all over the school by tea-bell.’
‘That won’t matter, so long as it’s handled properly.’
‘You’re saying you’ll speak to the head, sir? Tell him my side of it?’
‘Wouldn’t you prefer to tell him yourself?’
‘No, sir. You see – well, I reckon you know about Ireland and the Irish. You must have been in the trenches with people like my Governor. Maybe you could make him see why I blew my top?’
‘Very well, leave it to me. As to this gun, what shall we do about it?’
‘Throw it away I’d say, sir.’
‘Good idea. I’ve seen all I want to see of guns, antique and otherwise.’
He nodded and went off towards the plantation, finding a fox earth, stuffing the pistol into it and ramming it home with his boot. He had no intention of punishing McNaughton for what he saw as a justifiable explosion of wrath, and he did not think Herries or Howarth, McNaughton’s housemaster, would overrule him. And anyway, by now Paddy McNaughton, with his cool truculence, and his disposition to fight his own battles in his own way, had joined the company of Bamfeldians who had succeeded in forming a strong, personal contact with him, a group that already included Cooper and the Sixth Form volunteers of his first term, Boyer, Ridgeway and the Kassava boys, on account of the shared adventure of the fire, Skidmore, now known as ‘Preacher’, on account of his prolonged bedside prayers, Briarley, the boy he had tried to comfort back in the days of the Big Push, and one or two others, whom chance had singled out for eligibility. There was to be one other before that integration period ended, the boy who now featured in what he would recall as the curious affair of Blades and Julia Darbyshire.
Like most of the episodes that passed as peaks in the terminal graphs it came about by chance, one hot afternoon in late May, when he was taking the long way home over the plank bridge of the stream that ran between two folds of the moor above Stone Cross.
The First Eleven were playing Christow Manor and there had been two free periods after lunch. It was an important match but he had cramming to do and after watching the visitors’ innings, he left the field and cut through the plantation to the slope that led down to the Coombe. He had a purpose in mind. A rivulet ran through the cottage garden and Beth had made a water-garden there, planting wild flowers on the margins and hoping for the best. She was now in search of marsh marigolds and he remembered having seen them growing in the river bottom when he had passed this way during the last of the Lent term runs. He borrowed a trowel and a carton from Westacott, the gardener, and decided to see what he could find on his way home.
He had reached the head of a steep path leading to the bridge, half-aware of the distant sounds from the cricket-field that carried all the way over here when the wind was in the west, the faint but distant snack of a ball hit for a four and the scattered applause, pleasant, summery sounds he thought them and very English in that setting. Perhaps this was why he paused a moment to listen, his back to the school, his eyes on the valley below, a riot of brown and russet, shot through with the vivid green of new growth and, on more open ground, the gleam of celandine showing among the softer hues of lingering primroses and columbine. Rashes of campion grew there and a
few sparse patches of bluebells at the top of the wooded slope, a complex that utterly transformed the aspect of this same coombe once summer was at hand.
He was standing there, about twenty yards from the stream, when he heard a woman’s laugh and swinging round detected a slight movement among the waist-high ferns. There was no reason why he should investigate. The village women went there to mushroom and collect wood but the sound did not strike him as a local’s laugh. It had a light, musical quality that told him whoever was down there was what the moor folk would call a ‘foggy-dew’ or foreigner. Something else, too. The laugh was associated with dalliance. He thought shrugging, ‘Well, I’m no spoil-sport. Nobody tips his hat to a Peeping Tom,’ and was already turning away when the laugh was repeated, followed by a few indistinguishable words in the voice of a boy, almost certainly a Bamfylde boy, judging by the vowels. He thought, dismally, ‘Well, that does it. Now I’ll have to stick my silly nose in,’ and moved a few yards lower down, walking on brindled turf, to a point where he could see through a gap in the young foliage to the bank of the stream.
What he saw made him recoil. Sitting against the bole of an ash, her thick chestnut hair unpinned and half-screening her face, was Julia Darbyshire, the new Second Form mistress, who had recently replaced Mrs Parminter, the motherly soul everybody knew as ‘Ma Fender’. And reclining full length his head on Julia’s lap, was Blades, plagiarising the poet Herrick in a somewhat different sense from that implied in Howarth’s comment.
There was nothing really startling in the little tableau, framed in the hawthorn and sycamore leaves. On the contrary, if one could have regarded the couple anonymously, it was an idyllic glimpse of a man and his maid, at peace with the world, at one with their pastoral surroundings, oblivious of everything but each other. As he stood there gaping, he was able to identify the source of Julia’s laughter, for she leaned forward so that her hair brushed his lips, then drew back with another chuckle but at this Blades roused himself and grabbed a double handful, pressing them to his face in a way that succeeded in checking Julia Darbyshire’s merriment. Her face clouded and she said, rather desperately. ‘No Keith, you promised!’
It was as much as David could stand. He turned and retreated swiftly up the slope, not pausing until he was on the eastern side of the plantation and here, cursing the chance that had involved him in such a ridiculous situation, he took the shortest way home, hurrying along at such a pace that he was sweating when he reached the cottage gate.
Beth called, from the kitchen. ‘Tea now, or will you wait until Ben brings the twins in?’ and he called back, ‘Now!’ and slumped down on the bagged-out armchair, dabbing his temples.
She was beside him in a couple of minutes and even before she set the tray down she realised something was wrong. She said, ‘Well, what is it? Why the scowl on a lovely day like this?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you, Beth.’
‘That means you’d rather, so out with it. What’s happened up there?’
‘The twins are in the farmyard?’
‘Having their pony ride. Well?’
‘It was something I saw, almost stepped on. On my way home.’
‘Another adder?’
‘No, not an adder. I wish to God it had been.’ He thought for a moment, aware of needing, if not her advice, then certainly her reassurance.
‘It was Julia Darbyshire and young Blades. They were necking, down in the Coombe. They didn’t see me. I backtracked and came home by the road. I went that way to get your blasted marsh marigolds.’
She said, slowly, ‘Necking? How do you mean, exactly? You’d best tell me all you saw, if you want my opinion, that is. If not, we’ll leave it there.’
‘I want your opinion. I’m damned if I know who else’s I can seek, or not without starting one hell of an uproar. Blades is in Carter’s house.’
He described what he had seen and when he finished she was silent. Finally she said, ‘In your view, are they lovers?’
‘I don’t think so. Not from the way it looked, nor from her tone of voice, come to that. My guess is that he’s making the running and she’s holding back. For his sake more than her own.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t know. Just a hunch. I saw them and you didn’t.’
‘How old is Blades?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘And Julia?’
‘How would I know? About twenty-four, I’d say. I hardly know the woman. Algy appointed a spinster who had been a matron at a school up north but she let us down at the last minute and the agency sent Mrs Darbyshire.’
‘She’s married?’
‘She might be a war widow, I don’t even know that. She seems to have made a hit with the Second Form. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’
‘Once or twice, at a distance. Is she pretty?’
‘Not pretty but attractive in an odd sort of way. She’s got a kind of stillness, not the kind of face at all that goes with playing the fool like this. God damn it, if she was a kid in her teens I could understand it. We had trouble of that kind two years ago with Manners and one of the maids.’
‘What happened then?’
He grinned. ‘Old Judy Cordwainer caught them in the shrubbery behind the piggeries. Nearly gave the old boy a seizure. They took a very dim view of it. Manners was sacked, the week before he was due to take Cambridge Senior and the girl was packed off back to Challacombe. But this is worse. I mean, how the devil can one leave a woman like that in charge of twelve-year-olds? I’ll have to tell Algy.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘But damn it, I have to. You must see that.’
‘Not until you’ve talked to her and to Blades, if necessary.’
He looked exasperated and ran his hand through his hair. ‘But that’s poppycock! I’m a junior master, I can’t accept responsibility for a thing like this.’
‘You can find out more about it before a nice boy like Blades gets kicked out at seventeen. And the woman is put in a position where she couldn’t hope for another job.’
‘She doesn’t deserve one, does she? And as for Blades, he’s one of the brightest chaps we’ve ever had. He must have known what he was about.’
‘He might have, but then again, he might not. How can you know what led up to this unless you talk to them, separately, and let them know you saw them down there? You owe them that much. I think you do, anyway.’
He considered, checked by her earnestness but by no means converted to her point of view. He said, at length. ‘I’m not certain that’s loyal to Algy. What makes you so sure there’s more in it than meets the eye?’
‘Living here. Being a part of it for four years.’
‘How do you mean, exactly?’
‘Look, I’m flesh and blood, and so are you. So is everybody else up there, except one or two who have fossilised, like Ferguson. You’ve got to make allowances for four hundred boys cooped up in a place like this throughout their entire adolescence, without any contact with women, of the kind boys have in a day school. If half of what you’ve told me is true there’s far worse than this goes on in some of those famous schools. At least this is straightforward, a bright boy, his head stuffed full of romantic poetry, and a lonely woman, plumped down among God knows how many attractive young males. It can’t go on, I’ll grant you that. But if you take it to Algy Herries and Carter it will end in something that will do harm out of all proportion to the harm that’s been done. Providing any has.’
Her logic began to make sense, or better sense than emerged from his own reactions. He said, ‘I’ll sleep on it. Pour me some tea, I’m parched.’
3
He took her advice, as he had known he would. Julia Darbyshire’s quarters were two rooms on the second floor of Outram’s, over the quadrangle arch and he knew, more or less, when he could slip in there unobserved, for the Second Form had a woodwork class towards the end of morning school that coincided with his one free period of the day. He waite
d until they had trooped in and then followed Mrs Darbyshire up the stone steps to her sitting-room, pausing outside for a moment, summoning enough nerve to knock. Her ‘Who is it?’ from the far side of the door, told him a little more about her. She had a very pleasant voice, low-keyed and as musical as the laugh he had heard in the Coombe.
‘Powlett-Jones. Could I have a word with you, Mrs Darbyshire?’
She opened the door and stood there smiling at him, a petite woman, with good features and rather sad grey eyes. Her hair was her most attractive feature. It was a particularly fine shade of chestnut, almost auburn, and she wore it coiled in what they were now calling ‘earphones’. She had a presence that he found difficult to relate to the woman he had seen teasing a bewitched boy in the Coombe. It was as though he was looking across the threshold at two women, with nothing in common except a wealth of soft, chestnut hair. She said, still smiling, ‘Well, and what can I do for you?’
He said, falteringly, ‘Could I… er… step inside for a moment?’ and at once the sad eyes betrayed uncertainty as she said, stepping back, ‘Certainly,’ and then, her fugitive smile returned, ‘Have you come to give me good advice, like Mr Carter?’
‘Has Carter been here today?’
‘Not today, every other day for the first month of term. Until I told him I’d prefer to learn from my own mistakes.’
It was awkward, her saying that, and in that tone of voice. He floundered a moment and then made an opening of the chink she had offered saying, ‘I’m giving advice of a kind, Mrs Darbyshire, but I’m not sure you’ll relish it,’ and she replied, seriously, ‘I will if it’s well meant. You’re a very different kettle of fish to Carter.’
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