Amateurs interested in English history, in the middle decades of the fifteenth century, approach it with the certain knowledge that they will soon lose their way in a welter of warring dynasties. Until now, that is, for an unknown biographer (this is his first published book) has shown that patience plus enthusiasm can crop something very palatable from these pastures. The book is The Royal Tigress, a study in depth of Margaret of Anjou and her period, and the author is David Powlett-Jones, a West Country schoolmaster, a man with an obvious passion for the bloody struggle of York and Lancaster from first St. Albans to Bosworth Field…
Here followed a summary of the narrative that was more than a busy journalist’s rehash of the publisher’s blurb.
It requires more than a detailed knowledge of the period to convert shadowy figures like the saintly Henry VI, his vitriolic French wife, the Duke of York, Warwick the Kingmaker and others into the flesh-and-blood portraits Mr Powlett-Jones has drawn for us. He has brought to this thinly chronicled period a searchlight that reveals some of the motives and methods of power-hungry men, of the kind frequently encountered in later centuries. It is this that makes the book unique. As well as being as exciting as a well-constructed thriller, it is a warning to all men in high positions who allow personal ambition and pride to dominate their lives. Most of them, as we know, came to a very sticky end and Tudor England was the richer for their demise. But, apart from being a cautionary tale, this book is a romance set in the twilight of feudalism. The author is, I suspect a romantic, who began writing The Royal Tigress biased in favour of Lancaster. He ended a dedicated Yorkist. Edward IV, that genial, womanising giant, is seen here as the first modern sovereign of England, and his brother, the much-maligned Richard of Gloucester, as its last warrior king. Between them, the one consciously, the other unconsciously, they prepared the way for modern England.
In addition are portraits of many colourful characters; Margaret herself, indomitable, cruel and always unlucky; Tiptoft, the sadistic scholar, who said to his executioner ‘Behead me with three strokes, in honour of the Trinity’; the Kingmaker, playing for high stakes all his life and dying like a gladiator at Barnet and many others. Mr Powlett-Jones has also taken the trouble to make a study of the military strategy and tactics of the period, supplying us with comprehensive maps of the campaigns. Altogether an extremely readable book and one that can be recommended to student and layman.
Nobody, he thought, could be anything but flattered by Mr Ellicott’s review, and he wondered if he could hope for equally encouraging notices from other papers. It occurred to him then that here, if he was looking for it, was an alternative livelihood. A modest one, perhaps (the agent had warned him he would be very lucky to make four hundred a year from historical biography), but a living on a par with the one he was getting now, and this might mean he could abandon teaching if he felt inclined. It occurred to him also that it was strange he had not yet received advance copies of the book, and thought it possible that the parcel had arrived and was unclaimed in the parcels room.
The mere prospect of touching the book, of feeling it under his hand, sent him down the field at a trot to seek out Heffling, head prefect, and ask for the key of the parcels room. Heffling said, at once, ‘Sorry about yours, sir… it came Friday afternoon and was on Saturday’s list, but you were away, so I asked Taylor to leave it at Havelock’s. It must have slipped his memory, sir.’
‘Come along with me and get it, Heffling, for this is a magic moment I must share with somebody. Unless I’m mistaken it’s my author’s copies, copies of the book I’ve published on the Wars of the Roses,’ and Heffling, taken slightly aback, said, ‘You’ve actually written a book, sir? A real book?’ and David laughed and said, ‘Real enough in that it represents quarts of midnight oil. I began it before you arrived here in the winter of ‘25.’
It was the books right enough, six of them, clean, crisp and emitting that singular bookish smell everyone here associated with the start of the new school year, when all classes were issued with new exercise books. It was a fatter, heavier book than David had imagined, and the maps and illustrations had reproduced extremely well. Heffling turned the leaves reverently, almost as though he was handling the Book of Kells.
‘Gosh, sir,’ he said, at length, ‘this’ll put Bamfylde on the map, won’t it? I mean, the chaps will be tickled to death. Even chaps who think history is a bit of a bore.’
It slipped out, a virtual confession that Heffling spent most of David’s periods planning the tactics of the next game with Blundell’s or Queen’s School, Taunton, but Ellicott’s review had worked wonders on his goodwill. He said, ‘Look here, Heffling, you were the first in on this, apart from Mr Barnaby, who had to remind me I’d written the book at all. Would you like that copy as a keepsake?’
‘Me, sir? I’d like that very much, sir!’ and then, shyly, ‘Would you… could you autograph it, sir?’
‘Delighted. Never had the honour before. Here…’ and he took out his fountain pen and wrote on the flyleaf, ‘For George Heffling, presented by the author on the day of publication,’ and signed his name with a flourish. ‘It isn’t strictly true. Official publication day is tomorrow, but what’s in a day? Hand me those others. I’m going to autograph copies for Mr Howarth and Mr Barnaby, who read it in proof form.’
He left Heffling clutching his windfall and carried the books up to his quarters, wishing Grace was around to share his triumph, but she was pony riding on the moor and lunching at Ma Midden’s. He signed copies for Barnaby and Howarth, and a third for his mother, who would never read it but would take it up and down the street, then, just as he was going to seek Howarth, Chris rang, calling from ‘The Mitre’, the Bilhampton pub.
‘Davy? I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve only got a minute before they pick me up for the motorcade. Motorcade! One Morris, one Austin Seven, and two tradesmen’s vans. I just wanted to say thank you… thank you for everything, Davy darling, but especially the note you left. I feel much better, honestly. I don’t know how I would have coped last night if you hadn’t been there. But when I woke up and found you gone, then read your note and had a cup of tea and a serious talk with myself, things seemed different. I’ll show these baskets what I’m made of yet!’
It sent his spirits soaring even higher to hear her talk that way. ‘All you needed was a good sleep.’
‘Ah,’ she said, chuckling, ‘but I wouldn’t have had that if it hadn’t been for you. They always say it’s the best soporific in the world, don’t they?’
‘No hangover?’
‘None. I love you, remember?’
‘Good. Then here’s something that might send your mercury up another point, as it has mine,’ and he told her about the review in The Times, and the early copies of The Royal Tigress.
Her enthusiasm crackled over the line as she said, ‘But that’s wonderful! And to think I never asked about it.’
‘Don’t let that bother you. I’d completely forgotten it myself. Hi, you read all the papers. Will you keep an eye open for other reviews?’
‘I’ll do better. There are papers right here on the hotel table,’ and he heard her slam out of the booth and a moment later her voice saying, ‘I won’t have time to read them but I’ve got the Chronicle here, and some others… hold on,’ and he listened, grinning, to a prolonged rustling, ending in a shout, ‘There’s one here! In the Empire News, of all papers… “When Knights Were Bold!” What an awful heading! …But it’s nice. The man seems quite taken by it, says it reads like a thriller.’
‘That’s what Father Times says.’
‘You’ll be famous by tomorrow!’
‘Nonsense!’ he laughed, ‘but I must say I’m bowled over by them reviewing it at all. After all, I’m not a professional historian.’
‘Of course you’re a pro if you teach history, then go on to sell it between hard covers. Will you make a lot of money?’
‘The publisher says around four hundred if it sells out. A bit more on a rep
rint.’
‘This will send your stock soaring at Bamfylde, won’t it?’
‘I don’t quite know, they’ve never had an author before. But there’s another aspect of it, Chris. If I go on to write other books, and I’m sure I could, couldn’t I think about doing it full-time? Who gives a damn whether an author is married, single or living in sin?’
She said, in an incisive voice, ‘Cut that out, Davy! Write as much as you like. Make as much money as you can, and jolly good luck to you. But stay with what you’re doing. I know you far better than you know yourself, and you wouldn’t enjoy doing anything else, no matter how successful you were. They’re paging me now, darling. I can’t stay, except to say thank you over and over again, and how terribly pleased I am for you. Goodbye, darling, darling Davy.’
She rang off and he sat there with one hand holding the receiver, the other resting on the small pile of books, considering the unequivocality of her advice, and wondering how she could be so sure of his vocation when she was not in the least sure of her own. She had predecessors in this field. Both Beth and Julia Darbyshire had given him the same advice, and usually, when the ride was smooth, he found himself in agreement with them. But four years under Alcock had gone some way towards undermining his confidence. Now he was not at all sure. It would depend, he supposed, on how Bamfylde lurched into the new year, when the Governors met again to fill the vacuum. Until then there seemed no profit in seeking a hard decision. It was a time, surely, to drift along with the tide.
He went over to the bookcase and pulled out a copy of Who’s Who, thumbing through the flimsy leaves until he located ‘Ellicott, John Ernest; historian and author…’ with a long list of books to his credit. He even recognised the title of one that he had read and enjoyed. ‘So much for chaps who write books,’ he said aloud. ‘I didn’t even remember the author’s name,’ and for some reason this made him chuckle. He put two copies of the book in his bookcase between Oman and Macaulay, picked up those destined for Barnaby and Howarth, and went down the stairs whistling. ‘Queer that,’ he thought, as he crossed the empty quad on his way to relieve Barnaby. ‘I often used to whistle my way down these steps in Algy’s day, but I stopped doing it when Alcock took over. Maybe it’s the end of the tunnel.’
Four
* * *
1
HE HAD NO DIFFICULTY IN RECOGNISING THE PATTERN. EVER since he climbed the winding road from Bamfylde Bridge Halt for the very first time, it had forever reasserted itself, a personal within a national cycle, so that he could always see Bamfylde and the outside world as reflections of one another, hope countering disappointment, slump following boom, pain giving way to pleasure, failure to modest triumph.
The term, after such a gloomy start, was settling down to a minor boom, with Bamfylde back on course under Algy’s caretaker administration, with the surprising success of the book and the queer, quirkish satisfaction that it brought when he realised staff and boys took pride in his achievement. And after that, in mid-October, Chris’s amazing rally in South Mendips, where she too made headlines, with her unexpectedly high turnout against impossible odds, the Liberal pushed into third place, and a total of eleven thousand, four hundred and two votes.
There had never been the slightest hope of victory. All over the country Labour strongholds were falling, as the electorate opted for business as usual (whatever that meant) and the economies of the ‘National’ government were approved by all who were not directly savaged by them. The Government was back with four hundred and ninety-nine seats, Labour losing a total of two hundred and thirteen, including those of thirty-four ex-ministers. Socialism was in retreat everywhere and yet, in South Mendips, that had returned a Tory by mammoth majorities ever since the earliest days of extended suffrage, a slip of a girl beat the Liberal by over a thousand votes and cut the overall Tory majority by fifteen hundred.
He phoned the day after the election to congratulate her, finding that she was naïvely proud of her achievement. ‘It’s almost as good as being elected,’ she told him excitedly, and added that she had had a telegram of congratulations from Transport House, together with a promise that they would set about finding her a constituency where her chances of getting elected would be appreciably improved.
‘Will you accept, after so much groundwork right where you are?’ and she said she would think about it, for that, after all, was politics.
After that the term slipped by, with nothing much to distinguish it from any other term this time of year. The weather worsened. Flurries of sleet slashed down from the moor, and all the lanes following the river valleys became shin-deep in red porridge, making it impossible for leaders to maintain average times during the runs. David still went out with them, arriving back in the quad in the winter twilight wet through and plastered from head to foot with Exmoor mud. The area between the rugby posts became a quagmire, scrums slithering across in a mad, splashing frolic whenever the weaker side lost anchorage in the mire. Sometimes you could hardly follow a game through the curtain of mud and every other pass was fumbled as the threequarters dropped the soggy ball. Then the frost came, with every hedgerow hawthorn bush transformed into a chandelier, and a cloud of breath rising over the house warm-up runs like vapour over cattle, and everyone blowing on his hands and jostling for seats nearest to the defective hotwater pipes, that gurgled like a gourmand’s belly, giving the professional time-wasters any amount of excuses to practise their craft.
Coxe, inspirer of Towser’s headboard, found a half-frozen blackbird up in the planty and restored to it the power of flight. The sick-room was full, the matron irritably busy. Skelton, notable cricketer, left at very short notice to take a job in Christchurch, New Zealand, embarrassing himself and everybody else by piping his eye at a farewell supper in Nicolson’s. Barnaby sympathised. ‘Poor chap’s been here since he was nine. As a Sunsetter, it’s the only home he’s ever known. Must be damned frightening being uprooted by a telegram, and sent halfway across the world to muddle along among strangers.’ Barnaby was more discerning, David thought, than most people would have you believe.
Heffling, poor wight, broke a wrist when tackled by the visiting full back on frozen ground far out on the touchline, and had to be driven to hospital over treacherous roads by Molyneux – the small change of a term, but the big pay-off was on its way so far as David was concerned. In the last week of term, while David was superintending the unblocking of a frozen drain in the forecourt, he saw Sir Rufus Creighton drive up in his Daimler and give him a distant nod, descending a moment later to make his way into the head’s house without a backward glance.
He thought, ‘That old brown nut still has it in for me, despite his qualified support the day Alcock died – probably regards me as responsible for it, the way I did myself when it happened,’ but then Algy bobbed out, pink-cheeked and excited, saying, ‘Leave that infernal drain, P.J.! Let the outside staff see to it. Chairman wants a word with you. I’ll get Rigby to bring in coffee at break-time and rejoin you then.’
‘Hi, wait! What’s this in aid of?’ he demanded, but Algy was giving nothing away. ‘Not my pigeon,’ he said, ‘I’m only the caretaker here, old son!’ and skipped away, moving, David thought, more like a first-termer trying to keep the blood-circulating than a parson in his seventies.
Sir Rufus was seated in what Algy called ‘The Privileged Culprit’s Chair’, at angles to the study desk. It was a chair covered with petit-point, used by parents, members of the staff being consulted, and seniors being lectured by the head. Junior or Middle School defaulters were never asked to sit in here. ‘They wouldn’t know what to do with their hands and feet,’ Algy had once told him. ‘They much prefer to face the music standing.’ The old judge still looked like Buddha, his smooth brown flesh stretched tightly over his skull, his mottled hands tidily folded, as in prayer or meditation. The mark of his years in the East lurked in posture and sunken eyes. He said, quietly, ‘Take a seat, Powlett-Jones. Behind the desk, please.’ Then, surprisin
gly, ‘Do you smoke?’
‘Yes, Sir Rufus.’
‘Try one of these? Burmese. I indulge once a day, after dinner. One now would give me heartburn. I have them sent, you know, in boxes of one hundred. All the way from Rangoon.’
David accepted one of his cheroots and found it very strong. Sir Rufus, who seemed in no hurry, waited for it to draw. ‘Well?’
‘It’s… er… very good, Sir Rufus.’
‘I think so. Never could be bothered with whiffs. If you like to smoke then smoke the leaf, as God intended. Don’t poison yourself with chemical products, hashed up in Nottingham or Bristol.’ He paused, looking down at his brown, wrinkled hands, splashed with age spots. Then, raising his head, ‘When Herries retired a few years ago you had hopes of succeeding him, I recall?’
‘No real hope, sir.’
‘But you applied.’
‘I was talked into it.’
‘Indeed? By whom? By Herries?’
‘Not really. By Brigadier Cooper for one, by Mr Howarth for another. But I realise now that I applied against my better judgement.’
‘You wouldn’t back yourself to take over here?’
It took him getting on for a minute to absorb the shock. Then he said, carefully, ‘It isn’t that, sir. But I see, looking back, that my original application was a brash gesture on my part. I had only been teaching for nine years, and needed a great deal more experience.’
‘I see. And now?’
He smiled. ‘Well, I’ve had four years’ more experience. And I’m that much older and wiser.’
The little man pondered a moment. Then, with the greatest deliberation, he drew a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and spread it out on his knees. With a sense of shock David recognised it as Alcock’s unfinished letter. Sir Rufus said, ‘Dr Willoughby passed it to me. It was correct of you to give it to him. Some men, I think, would have hesitated to do that in the circumstances.’
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