R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield

by To Serve Them All My Days

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then, after a long pause, ‘He’s with a private tutor. He seems keen to study for a short-service commission in the Air Force. That awful business changed him. I don’t mean for the worse, maybe the opposite, but well… he’s never been quite the boy he was when it happened.’

  ‘Would you like to discuss it with him? He could go into the Lower Fifth, and I’d keep a sharp eye on him until he settled down. I know he was happy here.’

  ‘I don’t need to discuss it with him,’ she said, ‘although of course I will. I know he would like to come back, particularly under you. He came to understand precisely how you were placed, and that things were very difficult for you at the time.’

  ‘ “Difficult” is an understatement, Mrs Hislop. I came close to getting sacked myself more than once. Can I take it that he’ll come then?’

  ‘Yes. When exactly?’

  ‘Right away if you can arrange it. It doesn’t matter if he’s a week or so late starting term. Bring him over yourself if you like, and we’ll have tea.’

  ‘I’d like that. A week, you say? Sunday? That’s the best day for me, on account of the business.’

  ‘Sunday will be fine. I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘Right.’ And then, with a little difficulty, ‘I very much appreciate this, Mr Powlett-Jones, and I know Rex will. Mr Hislop will stand on his dignity but leave him to me. Goodbye for now.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Hislop.’

  He rang off, reflecting that one did not always take the privileges of power into consideration, but they were there, as he was beginning to discover. He thought, ‘I daresay eyebrows will be raised when Hislop shows up but to hell with that. His reinstatement will make Chris chuckle but she at least will approve.’

  And within hours the shut-down Bamfylde dynamo went into action, with cars and attaché-case-carrying railway arrivals, moving up both drives to converge on the grey buildings that sat so incongruously on the ridge, palisaded with leafless trees, moated by seeping fields where veils of mist deadened every sound, converting Bamfylde into a battleship alone in a vast, grey-green sea.

  For him there had never been a first day of term like this. It was not merely an occasion for another new boys’ tea but an entirely new beginning, with himself feeling rather like Keithley, smallest of the new arrivals, who drifted in at dusk, clutching his overnight case and a plaid rug, and looking as if, given the least excuse, he would drop everything on the study floor and flee across the moor. He said, calling to Grace, ‘Look after Keithley, Grace, while I check the last batch in. He’s come a long way, haven’t you, Keithley?’

  ‘Y-yes, sir… from Manchester. Change at Bristol,’ he added, a little pompously.

  ‘By George, that’s a long journey for a chap your size! And you made it in one. Bravo! Don’t be scared, you’re going to like it here, they all do after a day or two, and my daughter will show you the ropes once you’ve had tea and a warm-up by the fire. He’ll be going into Nicolson’s, Grace.’

  ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ she said. ‘We’ve only got three new ones this term, hardly enough for the cake, but Keithley could come, couldn’t he?’

  ‘My dear girl, they’ll all have to come, not just the Havelock new boys. We can’t have the head showing house favourites.’

  ‘Havelock’s will always be my favourite,’ she said, but added, doubtless for Keithley’s benefit, ‘Nicolson’s is second-best.’

  He left her then, ministering to the encumbered Keithley, and went out through the quad door to take the first start-of-term callover by lamplight, for the school’s generator batteries were not yet fully charged.

  Standing there, on the plinth of the Founder’s statue, where Keithley and his peers would soon be making their bow, he gripped the clipboard tighter than necessary, aware of an underswell of emotion and hoping it passed unnoticed by the very few senior boys who would recall Algy Herries standing here, on the first evening of every new term. It was a memorable moment, one to be put under glass, alongside many others – the Kassava brothers, huddled under that dormer window three storeys up; the first overtures of peace between Carter and himself, in the library passage; Algy’s white head emerging from the window under the arcade, to demand, of little Daffy Jones, who had won the house match that first spring afternoon, when Ludendorff was still attacking on the Western Front. These memories and many, many others, standing like pennants on a hard-fought battlefield and somehow adjusting to the rhythm of the roll-call, so that he seemed to be checking not merely on the present but also the past. It made him feel much older than thirty-five.

  Part Seven

  * * *

  ISLAND IN A TORRENT

  One

  * * *

  1

  DAVID POWLETT-JONES HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT OF HIMSELF as a political animal, and perhaps he was, up to the moment Sir Rufus Creighton offered him the acting headship. After that a streak of parochialism, that had been broadening within him ever since he had been absorbed into Bamfylde, began to spread until the men he had once jested about, stick-in-the-muds like Judy Cordwainer and Rapper Gibbs, became in a sense his prototypes. The overall effect upon him was curious. His personality both narrowed and deepened.

  He did not see himself as inward-looking but was honest enough, in reflective moments beside Algy’s thinking post, or sitting within earshot of the muted clamour of the quad, to acknowledge a definite shift in the centre of gravity. What happened here under his nose began to assume an importance that someone in close touch with the world outside would have mistaken for extreme insularity.

  For a time he resisted it, telling himself that Bamfylde was not really the crossroads of human affairs, that casting round for some means to alleviate little Keithley’s homesickness ought not to take precedence over, say, the state of the economy, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, but in the end, after a term or two, he had to admit that it did, and soon abandoned any attempt to keep abreast of national and international affairs. Running Bamfylde was a fulltime job, even when the parent ship of state was on course. When it looked like foundering, as lately, it was comforting to address himself to the problems at hand and turn his back on the world beyond school bounds.

  It was a conscious withdrawal, for the plight of Bamfylde, and the frightful disarray of the world outside, were inseparably linked. His acting headship began at a time when politicians had abandoned all serious attempts to solve the unemployment problem, when processions of sullen men trudged south to the capital to voice their grievances, when America, for so long a country said to be capable of achieving anything, was reeling under the blows dealt by the Wall Street crash of October, 1929, when bizarre adventurers like Ivar Kreuger, Swedish match king, were bankrupting governments, when the optimism of the ‘twenties had spent itself and the League of Nations, hope of liberals the world over, was being scuttled by Japan.

  These events, remote as most of them were, rebounded on Bamfylde, destroying confidence in traditional values and inducing a general shortage of cash. Warned well in advance by the prescient Howarth, David had expected school numbers to fall but the steepness of the drop surprised and dismayed him.

  In 1928, shortly after Algy had retired, they had mustered three hundred and ninety-one. By the spring of 1932 they were down to under three hundred, with a greatly reduced waiting list. Parents, having a hard struggle to make ends meet, tended to encourage boys to leave at seventeen, or even sixteen, instead of letting them progress to the Sixth and move on to university. There were noticeably fewer majors and minors on the roll, for often a father whose eldest son had done well at Bamfylde left younger sons at their local grammar schools. The modest increase in fees was paid but the belt-tightening it produced could be seen in the waiting-list. Indeed, the only marginal advantage gained from the slump was the comparative ease in finding trained servants, or masters with academic qualifications that would have gained them more important appointments in better times.

  For all
this, he turned away from Baldwin’s policy of retrenchment, and was aided and abetted by Algy Herries, to whom he went, in the Easter break of his first year.

  It was not the first time he had sought Algy’s advice. Often, during that first tight-rope term, he lured Algy into his quarters on the excuse of a glass of Old Boys’ sherry, and put some problem to him, knowing he could rely on an opinion free of prejudice. He did not invariably follow the advice given but he was always influenced by it. In the case of an appeal to expand he was gratified to discover Algy’s views coincided exactly with his own.

  ‘I have always thought,’ the old man said, revolving sherry glass between forefinger and thumb, ‘that that chap Danton was the most positive windbag to emerge from the French Revolution. What was it he said, when things were at low ebb, and Brunswick and the emigres were after his scalp?’

  ‘ “The kings of Europe advance against us…!” ‘ David prompted, but Algy exclaimed, ‘Don’t tell me! I remember exactly. “…We throw at their feet, as gauge of battle, the head of a king!” Rather splendid, wasn’t it? Reprehensible, of course, but what a gesture! What a pity his career was cut short by that frightful prig Robespierre.’

  ‘I didn’t get you here to philosophise on the French Revolution, Algy, but to confirm my opinion that this is a time to attack rather than run for cover. If you agree then I’d be delighted to hear you say so. It’s all I need.’

  ‘You don’t need it at all, P.J., for I’m no more than your longstop now and well you know it. You ask me back here out of sentiment, but don’t think I fail to appreciate it.’

  ‘That’s not true, Algy, but let it pass. I’ve discussed it with Howarth and Barnaby, and they both take a more cautious view. Howarth has been grousing about lack of classroom space for years, but now that our numbers have dropped, and we’ve got more elbow room, he counsels patience. As for Barnaby, he’ll never make an important decision if he can avoid it. The Ancients have taught him to keep an open mind about everything. But you’re different. In many ways you’re still younger than any of us. All I really need to know is why you favour attacking instead of waiting for better times.’

  ‘When you’ve been sitting in that hot seat as long as I sat in it,’ Algy said, ‘you’ll learn that the time is never ripe for advance on any one front, let alone all of ‘em. Someone will always be around to shout “Whoa!” to tell you to stay looking instead of leaping. If you pay the least heed to ‘em you’ll fossilise at fifty. See here, we look at the place now and what do we find? Numbers down, waiting-list shortening, head-wagging all round. Very well, but aren’t they very sound reasons for a special effort, and the right sort of advertising? Education in the public sector is improving and expanding all the time. We’ve got to give a parent something extra to tempt him to invest in us. I’ve always believed that although, as far as the fabric is concerned, I’m the wrong chap to be lecturing you. Alcock did more for the buildings in four years than I did in twenty-four, but I was here at a time when fabric didn’t count for much. That’s all behind us now. Parents think their little darlings are entitled to as much comfort in term as they get in the holidays, at “Green Gables” and “Windy Nook”. Can’t have ‘em warming their bottoms against the hot-water pipes, and giving themselves constipation, or finishing off Saturday’s joint with shepherd’s pie and bubble and squeak until Wednesday. They judge a school on its fabric and its menus. Why, if that cold fish Alcock hadn’t seen to those latrines you would have had the County Sanitary Inspector breathing down your neck by now. Just go right ahead with your improvements, and use every trick in the book to raise the wherewithal. Get the Governors to sanction a big overdraft if necessary and, talking of Governors, I’ll let you into a secret. I’m taking Blunt’s place on the Board at the start of summer term.’

  It was excellent news and David greeted it with a schoolboy whoop. ‘Going on the Board? But that’s marvellous! And here I’ve been biting my nails and wondering who would replace that old blockhead.’

  ‘Hush now,’ Algy said, holding out his glass for a refill, ‘the distinguished Alderman is hardly cold in his grave,’ but David said, ‘He was stone cold before he reached it. He blocked everything and in the end even Carter admitted we’d made a damned bad bargain enlisting him after the war. But with you in there, wheedling and cajoling…’

  ‘Cajole I often do, but wheedle never. There’s a difference, P.J. Always leave the options open on dignity. Well, now, to sum up, I take it you’ll go for a gym, new science lab and three new classrooms. That demands a one-storey new wing, at right angles to Big School. The gymnasium? Simple matter of roofing over the space between present stables and fives court. Even I got as far as drawing up plans for that. But what about the concert hall?’

  ‘Concert hall? Good Lord, suppose we could afford one, where would it go?’

  ‘Cheapest way would be to make the new wing a two-storey block, with the hall on the ground floor and a flight of steps giving access to the labs and classrooms from the quad. Cost you half as much again, but you’d have a real focal point for entertainments. I won’t tell you how sick I became of playing Gilbert and Sullivan to audiences soggy on the smell of boiled greens and pig-swill bins. And while you’re at it you might as well give the kitchen a face-lift. Never did care to show mothers over that. Once had a big hotelier here who peeped in when I wasn’t looking. We never saw him again. They tell me he kept all his sons at a secondary school until they were fifteen, then sent ‘em to learn the trade in Switzerland.’

  ‘But, hold on, Algy,’ David protested, ‘where the devil are we to find money for renovations on that scale? I set our target on a modest ten thousand.’

  ‘Change it to twenty. Make a splash. We’ll tap new sources that way. With Marie Stopes’s contraceptive campaign catching on we can’t rely on more than a hard core from the Old Boys in the future. When I started here the average family was five. Now it’s two and a bit. Money shortage isn’t the only acid eating into the waiting-list.’

  It was good to have such enthusiasm behind him and David launched his initial personal appeal at that year’s Whitsuntide reunion.

  It was a great occasion. So many familiar faces were there, ranged in rows in the library, and their presence assured him as to a general feeling of goodwill. At least a dozen covenants were forthcoming on the spot, a particularly generous one from the red-headed Letherett, one-time crony of Boyer in his wilder days, who had struck oil, so he said, in a large advertising business, inherited from an uncle who had died of drink. ‘Took a fancy to me, Pow-Wow,’ Letherett told him later. ‘My family is very straitlaced, and dropped him when he took to lifting his elbow too much, and buying fur coats for his typists. But I went to work for him, and used to get him home and put him to bed, and pass the typists off as my private harem. He changed his will in my favour a week before he snuffed it. Said I was the only relative he had who wasn’t a snivelling Puritan and therefore the only one who could hope to succeed in advertising, lair of the accomplished liar. Put me down for £100 a year over seven years.’

  There were several equally refreshing encounters. The Gosse brothers, Archy and Starchy, were doing well in the paper-making business. David, accepting a covenant from Starchy, reminded him of the occasion when sitting on Algy’s Mount Olympus, he had heard himself described as a Bolshie.

  ‘You still are, according to whispers reaching me, Pow-Wow,’ Starchy told him, ‘but so what? This place needed a bit of fresh air after the war. Makes you think, doesn’t it? I came here in 1916, when I was still wearing short pants, and look at me now. Not only shorter of wind, but pretty thin on top!’

  Not all the re-encounters were breezy, however, and one in particular left him with a feeling that life was still very much a matter of pot-luck. After they had all gone, and plans were being drawn up for a rebuilding scheme, provisionally costed at sixteen thousand pounds, Boyer showed up, wan and a little threadbare, so that David did not have to ask how he was riding out the slump i
n the north. Over a beer in the living-room Chad confessed the real reason why he had not attended the annual reunion. ‘It wouldn’t do much for my morale to admit to chaps like Letherett that I couldn’t stand a round at the bar, Pow-Wow. The fact is, I earn well under two hundred a year at a private school in the north. The head and his missis are very kind but the place has to be run on a shoe-string, with the general shortage of cash up there. It’s no good advising me to look for something better. I do, every time I nip around to the reading-room at the public library. It never struck me that jobs would be this hard to come by if I had a degree, but there are chaps with better degrees than mine who are on the skids. You need family money to tide you over something of this size and I never had any. Both my parents are dead and neither left me small change.’

  ‘What’s this place of yours like, exactly?’ David enquired, remembering the original Boyer, chock-full of humour and boisterous high spirits. ‘It seems to have got you down more than somewhat and it isn’t just shortage of cash, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s the general atmosphere of the area – defeated and played out. I don’t mind cities all that much but cities are places to work in and half the population seems to be on the dole. We’ve got a little Scots skivvy up there, pretty kid from the Highlands, mad keen to get an education. She sneaks up to my room whenever she can, not only for the obvious reasons but to cram. I don’t see much of her, mind. Her working day is around fourteen hours. She gets her keep and about ten bob a week. Talk about sweated labour, but cases like that are common in all the industrial areas today.’

  He glanced out of the window across the moor, now touched by the advance of spring. ‘I was very happy up here, Pow-Wow. They really look like proving the happiest days of my life.’ And then, with a touch of shyness that reminded David of the time he had called on him the night of Beth’s funeral, with the gift of books to replace those lost in the trenches, ‘I almost forgot the O.B. Appeal. It’s only a token, of course, but Bouncer Acton was always fond of the widow’s mite parable.’