‘I say, you can’t do that, Mrs Ferguson,’ David protested, thoroughly outraged. ‘At the time of the fire Towser’s howl saved us all.’
‘So? I did not hear of that and find it interesting. But what has it to do with a dog that will not eat?’
‘Give him to me. I’ll coax him to eat. He knows me and I’ll soon pull him round.’
‘But you have a wife and two children in that small cottage of yours. There is no room for a big dog, M’sieur Powlett-Jones.’
‘We’ll find room. We can’t let him be put down. He’s no more than three or four, is he?’
‘I have no record of his age. However, take him, if you wish.’
So Towser was led away, to the shrieking delight of the twins, and after a day of their sustained attention he abandoned his suicide bid. Within a week or two, however, Bamfylde received another grievous blow. Old Judy Cordwainer, also well past retiring age, followed his colleague to the churchyard, having caught a severe chill standing bareheaded in the rain throughout the service.
‘Rectitude killed him!‘ commented the irrepressible Morgan-Smith, ‘so that day-kid now has two beaks on his conscience.’
Once more the long, black-tied procession wound its way to Stone Cross and Algy Herries, quoting Marshal Soult, looked up at the sky as they were returning and said, ‘I’m beginning to hear the recall up there.’
‘Nonsense,’ said David, unable to visualise Bamfylde without Algy’s cheery presence, ‘you’re only sixty-two, and that gives you a minimum of another three years. Besides, you’re the fittest over-sixty I ever saw. Won’t you apply to the Governors for a stay when you reach official retirement age? We all hope you will. The place wouldn’t seem the same with a new head. And, anyway, what would you do with yourself?’
‘Oh, I’ll apply for a small, comfortable living somewhere handy,’ Algy said. ‘This place will need a face lift by then and not only structurally, my boy. Educational processes are changing as rapidly as everything else. Ferguson and Cordwainer belonged to the old school and could never really adapt. I did, with all you youngsters pushing from behind, but a man can’t change to that extent at my age. Hang it all, they taught practically nothing but Latin and Greek when I was a boy here. They welted it into you, too. None of this cosy uncle-nephew relationship that you and Irvine encourage.’
‘You too,’ said David, smiling, ‘so why not own up to it?’
‘I’ve never been one hundred per cent sure,’ Herries said, thoughtfully. ‘The average boy has changed, along with everything else. The war did that, I suppose, with that queer chap, Kitchener, sweeping everybody into khaki, and putting them through the mincer out there. Much more individualism nowadays. Don’t tell me the Fifth and Sixth don’t argue the toss with you every now and again for I know very well they do.’ He trudged on in silence for a moment. Then, lightly, ‘How would you feel about taking over Havelock’s, P.J.?’
‘Me? Getting a house at my age? And with an external degree?’ He gave Herries a suspicious sidelong glance. ‘Are you pulling my leg, sir?’
‘Of course I’m not,’ Herries said, grumpily. ‘What the devil has an external degree got to do with it? You’re a born teacher, and I don’t mean by that a man with the knack of imparting information. You still have it in mind to move on, haven’t you? Well, I daresay you could, and make a go of it in one of these big modern schools, but I don’t know that you’d be any better off for it. Except financially, of course. You’ve come to know my methods, my eccentricities if you like, and you suit Bamfylde. At least, you suit my idea of Bamfylde’s true function.’
‘Can you define that function?’
‘Yes, I can. To select what’s worth having from the green wood and hang on like grim death to the best of the seasoned timber. I’ve never been a great advocate of exams, or dedicated scholarship, or even technical education. You know that. Everybody knows it. I’ve always been more interested in turning out well-adjusted human beings and I imagine you go along with that. Think it over. Discuss it with that nice gel of yours, and let me know by the end of term. For if you don’t take it I’ll have to advertise for a man around forty, and my guess is I’ll have the devil’s own job finding someone who suits me.’
It was curious that the day of Judy Cordwainer’s funeral should prove such a red-letter day for them. There was no question in Beth’s mind but that he should accept the offer. Not merely for financial and prestigial reasons – the post carried another hundred a year, plus free living accommodation – but because, much as she had grown to love the cottage, life there in winter left a good deal to be desired. She said, excitedly, ‘Havelock’s is the newest house in the school, isn’t it? I’ll have much more room over there, and you’ll be right in the centre of things. Don’t think I haven’t realised how difficult it has been to divide your time and energy between the school and us, Davy. And I’ll like it too, although I can’t really see myself as a housemaster’s wife.’
‘You’re better qualified than any woman for miles around,’ he said, but she laughed, saying, ‘That isn’t the compliment it sounds. There’s only about eight of us all told. Seriously, though, I’m absolutely convinced, Davy. You’ll be a huge success, you see if you aren’t. Not that you don’t deserve it. You’ve worked harder than any of them up there. Won’t some of the younger men be jealous?’
‘Irvine won’t. He doesn’t want a house, at least Phyllis doesn’t. “Too much a tie,” she told me, only the other day. Besides, I don’t think they’ll stay long. She’s a town girl, really.’
‘So am I,’ she said, but he caught her round the waist, saying, ‘Ah, but you’re different. You threw your cap at a schoolmaster, remember?’ and he kissed her, his mind ranging on the vagaries of luck that never seemed to have permanent favourites but played the field, a man-hungry jade. Ferguson had seemed lucky up to now. And Cordwainer, too, in his staid settled way. Both of them too old to get caught up in the war and sticking it out down here, where they were not even obliged to go short of butter. But every now and again your luck ran out, as his had seemed to in the last months of 1917, when he had wished that mortar shell had finished him off, along with all the others in the traverse. Mostly it was a matter of holding on, as Algy Herries had held when he saw an entire generation of his boys killed off in their prime. He was not Anglicised beyond the point where he had ceased to think as a Welshman and caught himself contemplating Bamfylde from a Celtic standpoint, almost as his sisters or brothers-in-law might; ‘Funny that… used to think of places like this as proper old snob-factories… laugh at ‘em behind their back, I would. But these hills are as old as ours and the folk holding them are as obstinate as the people of the Valleys…’ And then, as it were, he translated himself, thinking, ‘If I can emerge as human as Algy in late middle-age, then I’ll count myself lucky. He must have had his doubts, pulling this place together when he first came here, but he won through in the end, against the fuddy-duddies, the diehards, God knows how many cheeseparing Governors, and the percentage of failures chaps in our line of business have to accept.’
They spent the entire Easter break moving house and settling in, counting themselves lucky that her father and stepmother took the twins off their hands while they did it. For him it was easy enough to adapt, having lived in Havelock’s during his first four terms, and later seen large sections of the house rebuilt after the fire. That, Beth said, had been a blessing in disguise, for now she had a modern kitchen with piped water, and the new dynamo they were installing promised electric light. The two rebuilt dormitories had been fitted with a fire escape, a novelty the boys of the other houses professed to despise. Morgan-Smith gave it as his opinion that any potential arsonist among new intakes would naturally gravitate to Havelock’s, where they catered for such specialists.
The rest of the staff took it philosophically when news leaked that he was to replace Ferguson. Barnaby, senior to David by several terms, was a little put out, and honest enough to admit it, but he was
far too amiable to nurse a grievance, whereas Irvine had been conditioned by his wife to leave his options open. He said, ‘Best of luck, old man, but it’ll bog you down. Phyllis is always nagging me to move on, but it’ll bog you down. I’ve already been on a couple of short-lists. She fancies a prep school of our own, in a seaside town where there’s a bit more social life. But we’d need capital for that and I can’t see us getting it until her Aunt Faith kicks the bucket. Phyl’s her favourite niece and god-daughter, so we’ve expectations, but there’s a snag. We have to spend every Christmas with the old girl, and her parrots and cats, and I can’t stand bloody cats.’
When Barnaby got over his pique he said, ‘Old Howarth is delighted, of course, but he’s always regarded you as his protégé, ever since you stood up to Carter. They’ve hated one another’s guts for years. By the way, has Carter brought himself to congratulate you?’
‘No, he hasn’t, and I don’t imagine he will. Doesn’t it strike you as bloody silly, Barnaby, that we wage our little feuds in a place like this, where we’ve all got to live and work together?’
‘It’s damned silly but inevitable, old man. The smaller and more isolated the place, the sharper the clash of personalities. You’d find it no different in a firm, a hospital, or government office. Wasn’t it the same in a regiment?’
‘Not once we came under fire.’
‘Ah, well, there you have it. Consult your Ovid, old boy! “Fortuna miserrima tuta est; Nam timor eventus deterioris abest.” Look it up. I took you over it last year,’ and he floated off, hunching his gown about him in a way that enhanced his counterfeit inscrutability.
David did look it up, finding it in his notes on Ovid’s elegies, written during his banishment. ‘Tuta petant alii. Fortuna miserrima…’ ‘Let others seek what is safe. Safe is the worst of fortune; for the fear of any worse event is taken away.’ Like all Barnaby’s tags it was apt. Every succeeding generation had to learn from its own experiences. The wonderful comradeship of the trenches, the only solid gain of the war to those who fought it, rested on Ovid’s dictum. It was perfect because it was practised by men who had reached a point where they had nothing else to lose. Under those circumstances most human failings fell away. But once the pressure was removed people reverted to what they were and he and Carter were alike in this respect. He thought, ‘Howarth’s wrong and I’m wrong, to persist in this game of “you-did-I-didn’t” with Carter. We’re level pegs now, and he can’t patronise me as a housemaster. I’ll find some way of holding out the olive branch once we’re all back for summer term…’ and he meant to consult with Beth about it but it slipped his mind in the whirl of end-of-term activities.
Looking back on that final period of unclouded happiness he could not recall much but laughter. Laughter, welling from small, insignificant sources, like the ultimate sally of Bickford, in Bouncer’s divinity period, one that earned the culprit the standard four penal marks, plus several more on his leathery backside from Bouncer’s ill-directed cane, but passed into Bamfylde legend and changed his name to ‘Ruby’.
It was a very small joke really, but good enough to be re-told over common-room coffee – how Bouncer, spouting Proverbs to an indifferent Fifth, quoted, ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies’, whereupon Bickford raised his hand and asked, blandly, ‘Please, sir, what was Ruby’s?’
There was laughter among the Orpheans, when Baines Minor, drumming away for dear life one damp morning, drove both sticks through his soggy drumskin. Laughter in the Second Form, when Gilroy, a new boy, lacking a nickname, earned one by pausing at the unfamiliar word ‘apostrophe’ while reading aloud and finally made a gallant try with ‘Apos… apos… apos-TROPHY, sir’ and was afterwards known as ‘Strofe’ Gilroy. Small, asinine incidents that yet added something to the texture of life on the plateau. Nipper Shawe (now launched into the world and said to be doing well in marine insurance) had surrendered his job as bell-ringer to a pallid boy called Fogaty, innocuous at work and play but, given his bell, someone who took on the gravity and dignity of a town-crier. It was thus a joke to be relished when someone in the Lower Fifth, whose quarters were situated immediately above the niche where the bell was kept, bored a hole through the floorboards and attached a strand of fine wire to the handle, pulling it up the moment Fogaty reached out to grasp it, so that it began to ring itself. Then there was Vernon, the amateur ventriloquist, who threw the entire corps into disarray issuing orders in Carter’s testy voice; Nixon Minor, who got hold of a noxious dye, and stained the water in the swimming bath the colour of blood, and Boyer’s swan-song as a practical joker, that led to a confrontation neither Boyer nor David ever forgot, for it struck a new balance in their relationship and presented David with his first major decision as master of Havelock’s.
Boyer had sobered over the years but every now and again his extravagant sense of humour shot through the crust of Sixth Form sobriety like a geyser. His ultimate escapade was to borrow an Old Boy’s motorcycle, disguise himself in a smock, felt hat and false beard, and ride into the village where, for a bet, he drank half a pint of beer in the presence of Barnaby. Barnaby far too much of a sportsman to identify him on the spot, none the less told David, who sent for Boyer, demanding to know what has prompted such an idiotic performance. Boyer said, quite seriously, ‘I… er… don’t really know, sir. Exhibitionism, perhaps.’
‘Exhibitionism, my good right boot!’ bellowed David. ‘Don’t quote any of those fancy Freudian words at me! I could get you sacked for a thing like that. Kicked out, after how long here?’
‘I’m in my ninth year, sir.’
‘Nearly two more than me, and you in the Sixth. It’s the maddest thing you’ve ever done and by God, that’s saying something! Here I was, hoping you’d help play me in as house prefect for my first year.’
He was relieved to see Boyer frown as he said, ‘Does that mean I’ve been passed over, sir?’ and David said, irritably, ‘I’m hanged if I know! You’ve got more potential than any other senior in Havelock’s. But how the devil can I trust you with responsibility for younger kids when you act as if you were still in the Lower Third?’
‘Couldn’t we make a bargain, sir?’
‘What kind of bargain?’
‘Well, sir, you forget my jaunt to the Maltster’s Arms, and I’ll back you to the hilt until I leave here next spring. The fact is, sir, I’ve played the fool for so long it’s difficult to stop overnight. The chaps…’ and here he stopped, avoiding David’s eye.
‘What about the chaps, Boyer?’
‘Well, they expect it of you, if you know what I mean, sir.’
David knew but was not prepared to admit it. Boyer was the exact equivalent of the daredevil subaltern, the sort who went out into no-man’s-land for the hell of it, and finally got himself killed establishing he had guts and initiative. He wondered, fitfully, at his propensity to equate almost everything that happened here with his experiences in the trenches, yet he did, almost as though his time out there had been an apprenticeship for the job.
He said, finally, ‘Look here, Boyer, against my better judgment I’ll take a chance on you. I’ll recommend you to take Brandon’s place. He’s leaving in a week or so, to take that job he wrote after in Rhodesia. But if you let me down, I’ll see you don’t forget it. I ought to give you a damn good hiding but you know I don’t even approve of thrashing juniors, let alone a great lout of your age. All I can do is to appeal to you for help, the way I did the night of the fire. I’ll keep this last idiocy to myself, and ask Mr Barnaby to do the same. But it’s the last, you understand?’
Boyer, looking more thoughtful than David had ever seen him look, slipped away and that same night David asked Herries to make the appointment. Algy, who had always been slightly bewildered by Boyer’s explosive high spirits, said, ‘Boyer, eh? Well, I hope you know what you’re doing, P.J. He’s a wild one and no mistake. Sort of chap who might land himself in real trouble one of these days. And without meaning to
, for he’s got his points. I’ve always seen him as a chap who took on too much too quickly and went bankrupt. Or a cat-burglar, who only robbed the rich. Nothing the slightest bit vicious about the boy, mind you, just someone who has to let off steam every now and again. What’s he got in mind when he leaves here?’
‘I don’t think he knows himself, sir. That’ll depend on the exams at the end of next term, won’t it?’ but Herries smiled. ‘Not on your life. Examinations are for the conformists, as I’ve told many an anxious parent in my time. And nobody could call Boyer a conformist.’
They dispersed the next day and holiday stillness descended on the place. In the lull that followed, David, recalling that he and Beth were approaching the sixth anniversary of their encounter on the pier at Colwyn Bay, posted off to Challacombe on the excuse of seeing his bank manager and collecting some curtain materials Beth had ordered. With these errands accomplished he made for Merriweather’s, the Challacombe jeweller. He had intended buying her an oval wristwatch as a birthday gift but on entering Market Street he paused outside Marty Lile’s car mart, spotting a three-wheeler, with ‘For Sale – Bargain’ scrawled on its windshield. Marty, seeing him, waddled out, chafing his hands, in a way exactly mimicked by two generations of Bamfylde boys.
He said, in his broad Devon burr. ‘Top o’ the marnin’ to ‘ee Mr Powlett-Jones! That there motor is a praper ole steal. No more’n dree thousand on the clock. Why dorn ‘ee try her out?’ and when David said he was in no mind to buy a car, especially a three-wheeler, Marty said, ‘Giddon, you and the missus need transport outalong, dorn ‘ee? Youm stuck fast half the year round. Woulden it be nice to have your orn means o’ poppin’ inalong for a visit to the pictures every now and again?’
It would at that, thought David, remembering the long winter evenings, and reminding himself that the twins were due to start nursery school at the village primary in a month or two. ‘How much, Mr Lile?’
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