The appointment of headmaster’s monitors was another of Alcock’s innovations. Each week a trainee prefect was employed as his errand boy and the job was popular in the Upper Fifth, for it meant, among other minor privileges, a week of sanctioned idleness and plenty of fresh air. Christopherson, however, was a studious boy, who took his duties seriously.
‘The headmaster’s compliments, sir. Would you please step across for a word with him?’
The laugh died, killed, no doubt, by the expression of irritation that crossed David’s face. It was not unknown for members of the staff to be summoned to the presence in the middle of a period, but it was unusual. He said, ‘Right, Christopherson, take over here, while I’m gone, I won’t be more than a jiffy, page one-o-six in the textbook, the minority of Henry VI,’ and dusting chalk from his gown he went out across the quad, entering the head’s house through Big School passage.
Alcock, as he expected, was seated behind his rampart, frowning down at a neat, taped file, the kind of file, David thought, one might associate with an old-fashioned solicitor or a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture. He knew enough of Alcock, however, to be certain it was a file with his name on it, possibly in private code.
‘You wanted me, Headmaster?’
‘Yes, please be seated. This may occupy us some little time. You were taking the Lower Third, I believe.’
‘He knows damn well I was,’ David reflected, ‘since he memorises the timetable every new term…’ but said, briefly, ‘I left Christopherson in charge. You won’t want him while I’m here, will you?’
‘Er… no,’ murmured Alcock vaguely, and his rare uncertainty alerted David at once. It was not often that Alcock showed vagueness in the presence of anyone he summoned.
‘Well?’
‘It’s about this. I thought it only fair to ask for an explanation at once, for there may well be some unfortunate misunderstanding. The press is notoriously inaccurate in these matters.’
He passed over a news-clipping, a single column report, cut from a provincial paper, and dealing with Christine Forster’s adoption meeting. David was surprised to see it, and even more surprised to notice that the introduction, set in heavy type, concerned his own contribution to the evening’s speeches. It was headed ‘SCHOOL MASTER SUPPORTS LABOUR candidate’, and below, in smaller type, ‘Reference to Local Hangings – “Martyrs to Freedom’s Cause” Claim’. A few lines of the introduction were linked to a summarised version of his speech on the Monmouth weavers, executed in Bilhampton Market Place, in 1685, and the closing section of the speech itself was given verbatim. He said, carefully, ‘I don’t think there’s any misunderstanding. This is a pretty fair report of what I said.’
‘You actually appeared at the meeting, and spoke from the platform?’
‘Of course I did. It says I did. What’s unusual about that?’
‘It doesn’t strike you, not even on reflection, as a very impulsive act on your part?’
‘No, it doesn’t. I know the candidate. She’s related to a boy who was head prefect of Havelock’s, before your time. She asked me to speak and I did. Members of the staff aren’t banned from making political speeches, are they? For if they are it’s the first I’ve heard about it. Mr Herries once presided over a Liberal rally at Challacombe to my certain knowledge, and Mr Carter signed the Conservative candidate’s nomination papers last election. I had no idea the speech would be reported, and I’m surprised that it was, but I’m not going to apologise for it. Did you expect me to?’
‘No,’ Alcock said, ‘knowing your headstrong character, I didn’t, Powlett-Jones. But I would anticipate a certain reluctance on your part to appear on a public platform at a political meeting of that kind. You note that the name of the school is quoted.’
David glanced at the cutting again and saw that this was true. He had no recollection of having mentioned the school to anyone save Christine and could only assume the reporter had got the information from the local secretary, who might have had his address. It still did not seem important, however, and despite his knowledge of Alcock, he remained puzzled by the man’s obvious concern. ‘Would you like to elaborate your own views, Headmaster?’
‘I need to do that?’
‘I think you do. You summon me in the middle of a period, and put a newspaper cutting into my hand, implying that I have overstepped the mark in some way. I should like to know what way. We live in a democracy, and the Labour Party is at present in office. Are you suggesting schoolmasters don’t enjoy the same political liberty as other people – doctors, clergymen and so on?’
‘In a sense I am. How a schoolmaster casts his vote is, of course, his own concern. How he conducts himself in public is not. It never has been. Do you take my point?’
‘No, and to make it you’ll have to do better than that, Headmaster. If I had been drunk, and caused a public disturbance, or appeared before magistrates on a charge of bothering women in cinemas, you would have every justification for summoning me here, and even asking for my resignation. You could hardly do that on the strength of an innocuous speech I made at a public meeting in another county. Or in this county, for that matter.’ He got up. ‘Is that all?’
For the second time he noticed that Alcock was fidgeting, his fingers unlocking and the knuckles gleaming as his right hand closed and unclosed on an ivory paper-knife, shaped like a scimitar. Then, as though catching himself giving ground, he pushed the knife out of reach and made a ‘steeple’ with his hands.
‘It can’t be all, can it? As a matter of fact, I think it essential, Powlett-Jones, that we… er… er come to some kind of understanding, here and now. I see that newspaper cutting as important. You don’t. No matter, let us shelve that for the moment, and concentrate on your attitude towards me ever since I was installed. You have made it manifestly plain that you dislike me, and dislike my methods even more. I am not interested in knowing why. Within certain limits any member of the staff is free to exercise personal preferences, providing they do not affect his loyalty to a colleague. But I think even you will admit that our relationship has reached something of an impasse, that it can no longer be subjected to strain without rupture of the discipline I try and maintain here. I did not mention resignation but you did. Perhaps it is something you would like to think on for the remainder of the term.’
David sat down again. He was red in the face but not from embarrassment. Alcock was no longer capable of embarrassing him but he could still make him almost incoherent with rage. Knowing this, he gave himself a full half-minute before saying, ‘You’re asking me to resign? On account of that newspaper report?’
‘I’m asking you to think about making a change. And not on account of that newspaper report. Rather on the impossibility of us arriving at, shall we say, a working compromise. Carter and Gibbs reached the same conclusion, I imagine, but they… er… acted on it.’
He had himself in hand now. The rage in him cooled and in its place came a sense of release, of having suddenly seen a rift in the wall Alcock and Alcock’s methods had raised between them, brick by brick, over the last few terms. He braced himself, leaning forward and staring the man down in a way that anyone but Alcock would have found embarrassing. Instead he only looked mildly astonished as David said, emphatically, ‘I’ll be damned if you’re going to bully me into resigning. And I wouldn’t advise you to try on this issue. It could land you, rather than me, in a very embarrassing situation. Do I have to explain what I mean by that?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Alcock hedged, ‘and I can only repeat I’m not asking you to resign. Only to ask yourself if a change wouldn’t be the wisest course in what remains of the term. We could come to some arrangements about the usual notice.’
David got up again. Suddenly, and to a degree that astonished him, he was composed, almost jaunty. Declaration of open war came as a relief.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘suppose we leave it like this. Here’s your clipping. Show it to whom you like. And show them the co
ntents of that file too, providing you send me a duplicate of any allegations it contains. If it came to a show-down I could demand that. Or my solicitor could. But it need not go as far as that. I only want to make two things clear. Resignation on my part – the dignified version you’re seeking – is out of the question. And I reserve the right to appear on any public platform I choose, so long as I am convinced, in my own mind, that such appearances don’t reflect on the school’s reputation. You can try and force me to resign, but if you do I’ll fight. I’ll fight every inch of the way, inside and outside Bamfylde. I’ve disagreed with you, yes, in all manner of things, but I’ve never been disloyal to you in the way you imply and I never would be. I’m far too attached to the school to act the fool in that respect. My… er… compliments, Headmaster. I’d best get back to the class now.’
He went out, shutting the door carefully behind him, and was relieved, as he crossed the quad and started up the steps to the Lower Third, to hear the bell announce the end of afternoon school. Before he reached the landing the Third Form had erupted and Christopherson slipped out, descending the stairs quickly and pretending not to notice him. He thought, grimly, ‘Is that because he has a pretty good idea the Stoic and I have just had a God Almighty row? Or is it because the class was out of hand before the bell?’
He turned left and cut through the Rogues Gallery to the linen room, thence to his own quarters, glancing sideways at a cherubic Algy Herries, beaming down from the panelling. ‘I won that round on points, Algy,’ he said aloud, and little Burnett-Jones, emerging from the linen room with a newly darned pair of socks, scuttled off to tell the Second Form that Pow-Wow was beginning to talk to himself, a certain sign of onrushing lunacy. He was a little crestfallen when this piece of intelligence caused no stir at all. Venn, from the lofty peak of a third-termer, hardly looked up from a count of grimed cigarette cards as he said, ‘Queen Anne’s dead. They all do that. You’ll get used to it in a term or two, new kid.’
2
He had won on points, he claimed, but Howarth wasn’t so sure, and neither, it seemed, was Barnaby, usually so sanguine.
‘He’ll carry it farther,’ Howarth said, glumly. ‘Don’t you see that he has to? His position here is untenable if he doesn’t.’
‘You could say it’s untenable if he does,’ said Barnaby. ‘For one or the other of them, that is.’
‘You think he’ll be stupid enough to lay that cutting before the Governors?’
‘A careful selection of the Governors. And not the cutting alone, you can be sure of that. It will be a door opener and inside will be a long-winded report embracing your stand on that smoking incident, and your fight to save Hislop.’
‘If he confines himself to those issues the Governors can’t do a thing,’ Barnaby said, perking up a little, ‘Any housemaster worth his salt would fight for one of his boys, and that’s all Carter and P.J. did. No, it’s the cutting that bothers me. How many Socialists occupy seats on that board, P.J.? Frankly, I can’t see why you’re so cocksure, can you, Howarth?’
‘Knowing our boy, I can,’ Howarth said, lighting one Gold Flake from another, ‘but I don’t expect him to unmask his batteries for our edification. Watch and wait, Barnaby!’
‘I will,’ said Barnaby, ‘and I won’t forget to pray while I’m at it.’
He found the two letters on his hall table, assuming they had come by the late afternoon post, that rarely yielded anything of interest. One, from Christine, was a crackling account of her first week’s canvass in the constituency, enclosing a duplicate of the cutting Alcock had just shown him. It was overscored, ‘Look who is stealing my headlines! Not to say a cabinet minister’s!’
He opened the other letter, bearing the imprint of the literary agent he had chosen at random from the Artists’ and Writers’ Year Book. He read it at first without taking in the contents but then, re reading it, he uttered a shout of glee. The agents had found a publisher for ‘The Royal Tigress’, Millards, a firm specialising in educational books, and were offering an advance of one hundred pounds, on a royalty of six per cent on the first five thousand copies and ten per cent thereafter. The agent enclosed the publisher’s offer, and the letter quoted from a reader’s report in what David regarded as flattering terms. ‘A neglected period extremely well researched… readability one seldom finds in work of this kind… human insight into characters usually seen as pasteboard figures in a text book… exciting blow by blow descriptions of the major battles… a firm grasp of military strategy, particularly that of Edward IV…’ and so on. He sat in the embrasure of his study window, looking out over a moor touched by the first kiss of spring, savouring his personal triumph and a sense of achievement that reduced Alcock and all his works to insignificance. He had never really imagined a reputable publisher would pay good money for the book. In the far-off days when he had begun it, he saw it as a kind of private joke between himself and Beth and later, after her death, he had resumed it as a means of keeping gloomy night-thoughts at bay. Later, when the theme and the period took hold of him, he had enjoyed writing and rewriting the battle scenes, and making fresh guesses at the principal actors in the long drama. Now, with the offer of a hundred pounds in his hands, the stack of manuscript that had occupied an undusted corner of his desk for so long had a real place in the pattern of his life and he picked up the carbon copy of the dedication page and read, ‘To My Wife, Beth, who never ceased to urge me to write this book’. He thought, ‘By God, I should have liked her to have shared this moment… but she will in a way, for young Grace will be madly excited. I’ll tell her, of course, but the others… Howarth, Barnaby and so on, they can wait until the printed version actually appears.’ There was one exception, however, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Chad Boyer, now in his final year at Cambridge, saying nothing of his recent confrontation with Alcock but telling him about ‘The Royal Tigress’, and adding that he would be delighted to see him if he could get down during the vacation.
3
Knowledge that the book was in the pipeline (earliest date of publication was September) kept him cheerful for the remainder of the term. For the first time in more than eighteen months Bamfylde saw Pow-Wow Jones as the older hands among them recalled him in Algy’s time, a jester who yet managed to convey to them something of the grandeur of British history, who scratched among the trivia of text-book names and treaties for something that could link dry-as-dust facts to today’s headlines in the press, who was not above telling the Fifth and Sixth Forms risque stories of Lord Melbourne, and Madame du Barry, and resorted, in Lower School periods, to a repertoire of jingles and tag-lines, in order to fix a date or an event in the memories of boys who might otherwise have made their minds a blank until the first clang of the dismissal bell. He still infiltrated current affairs into his Upper School lessons, sometimes spending an entire period discussing the League of Nations, the seven-and-a-half-hour working day laid down under the Coal Mines Act, or the end of the Allied occupation of Germany. He had, that year, a particularly bright Sixth and an unusually quiescent Lower Fourth, so that he was able, almost effortlessly, to lose himself in work and outdoor activities, such as O.T.C. band-practice and the tail end of the cross-country season. Havelock’s, inspired perhaps by his own keen interest in running, won the cross-country shield that term for the first time in school history, and this, in its small way, was another personal triumph. He also began to take a desultory interest in the work of young Renshaw-Smith, the music master who had replaced Rapper Gibbs, an aesthetic-looking twenty-four-year-old, devoted to his subject but inclined to be nervous and obviously terrified by Alcock’s occasional appearance, at a choral society or church choir rehearsal. David did what he could to pump confidence into the man, telling him he was just in time to prevent the virtual extinction of musical interests in the school, a sparetime activity that Algy had done so much to foster. David went along to one or two choral society rehearsals himself, and was moved, as he always was, by the sexless voic
es of the juniors singing traditional songs, like ‘Greensleeves’ and ‘Gaudeamus’, always among his favourites.
Howarth and Barnaby, noticing his cheerfulness, made characteristic comments. Howarth said, ‘Glad to see you perking up again, P.J. Must be Carter’s absence,’ and when David denied this, saying that old Carter wasn’t half bad once you got to know him, Howarth smiled his wry smile and added, ‘Well, then, it’s probably the relief that accompanies a burst boil, old son. You’ve thrown down the gauntlet and that bounder hasn’t the guts to pick it up.’
‘That’s nearer the mark,’ David conceded, but he was able to improve on this when Barnaby, marking the same rise in spirits, quoted his favourite Horace – ‘The beardless youth, his tutor being dismissed, delights in horses, dogs and the sunny expanse of turf.’
‘Not strictly applicable,’ David said, ‘but Horace can probably tell you how I’m disposed towards the Noble Stoic, now that I’ve told him to jump in the river – how about “Ignemgladio scrutare”? Do I have to translate?’
‘No,’ Barnaby said, mildly, ‘but I could quote back at you in the same context. “Sometimes it is folly to poke the fire with the sword” – a proverbial phrase, I believe, don’t ask me the source. If I were you, P.J., I’d let things ride for a term, and give us all a much-needed breather.’
Barnaby got his wish, at least through the fag-end of the tight rope term, and up to the time he went off, with half a dozen Sunsetters, on a walk along Hadrian’s Wall. David would have liked to accompany him but it would have meant leaving Grace alone, for they had made no arrangements to go into Wales, or up to town to visit Beth’s folk. He remained Bamfylde-based, therefore, spending his time riding and walking with her over the plateau.
Sometimes, when they were mounted, they pushed as far as Chetsford Water, where he told her, for the first time, of his despairing tramp through the storm the day her mother and her twin sister were killed, and how young Winterbourne, no more than fourteen then, had taken charge of him and piloted him back across the sodden moor to learn that she herself had a sporting chance.
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