R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield

by To Serve Them All My Days

  He was very glad then that Chris was so obsessed with her child that her approach to politics was muted, although, every now and again, she would curse Chamberlain as a fool and a coward. Like him, she winced at Chamberlain’s brief triumph, when he arrived back from Munich, to be received with hysterical cheers as he waved his absurd bit of paper.

  ‘It’s the most terrifying spectacle I’ve ever seen,’ she told David, when they watched a news-reel on a rare visit to the cinema. ‘Nobody sane could believe in it and I don’t think any informed person does. They’ll be evacuating children and digging air-raid shelters in a week or so, and I hope to God somebody somewhere profits by the time that idiot is supposed to have bought us. But I wouldn’t bet on it, would you?’

  No, he told her, he would not, and with the onset of the new school year a sombre mood settled on him, not improved by a surprise visit from Carter, with an even more surprising proposition in his briefcase.

  Carter, it seemed, was someone else who wasn’t taken in, and was making his dispositions well in advance. ‘If it does come to a show-down they’ll evacuate my beat on the coast,’ he said. ‘We’ll qualify as bona fide evacuees, and I want to get in on the ground floor. I don’t want them sending me and the left-overs to some Godforsaken place up north, where I’ve no local contacts. You have plenty of room here now. Could you accommodate, say, an extra fifty under fourteen, if you had to? It would let you out too. They’re bound to regard you as a host school. The Luftwaffe isn’t likely to bomb Middlemoor, is it?’

  The scheme had a good deal to recommend it. Carter’s venture had prospered, and he could pay a good rent. It would also mean that at least some of his youngsters would automatically qualify as Bamfeldians as soon as they passed their fourteenth birthday, so he gave Carter a promise that he would put the proposition before the Governors and ring back within a fortnight.

  He carried out the first half of his promise and, as he had fully expected, the Governors approved. But then, like balanced buffets to the left and right of his head, two other events put everything else out of mind. In the second week of a new term Chris was rushed off to the nursing home, and he had barely settled her in, horribly anxious but outwardly bearing up, when Howarth died, a week or so short of the six months given him by the specialist in the spring.

  They sent for him early in the morning and he found Howarth conscious and very restless. His blanched face was a parody of the man he remembered. It looked like the face of someone in the final stage of starvation, but the breakfast bell seemed to alert him, as though that same sound, repeated down three decades, at precisely the same hour of the day, was still able to recall him to duty. He opened his eyes, gestured feebly to the nurse, then fixed his gaze on David. The male nurse got up and left, obviously in response to some previous instruction and Howarth whispered, as the door closed. ‘This is it, P.J. Wanted to see you… know you were still around…’ and he moved his left hand in a way that impelled David to take it. They sat there for a minute or so, listening to the clamour of boys hurrying down the long stone passage to Big Hall and breakfast. Then, after the hall door had banged on a prolonged bumping of forms and rattle of crockery, he said, ‘Curtain… what kind of day?’

  David got up and pulled the curtain of the window facing south east across ploughland and the blur of copses screening Bamfylde Bridge Halt.

  ‘Very clear,’ he said. ‘No rain about. Can you see it from where you are?’

  Howarth nodded briefly and said, ‘Wife all right?’

  ‘Any minute now,’ but Howarth seemed not to be listening. With his free hand he made an attempt to reach under the pillow, finally succeeding in exposing a stiff folded document that David recognised as his will. In response to Howarth’s nod he opened it out. It was a very simple will. Everything Howarth possessed had been left to the school. There was a brief codicil, dated two days before, naming Chris as the beneficiary of two hundred pounds, and meeting David’s questioning glance, Howarth said, with a grimace that might have been one of his wry smiles, ‘Not for her really. For that boy… if you get one.’

  ‘I’m going out there this afternoon. This is very good of you, Howarth. Chris will be touched,’ and Howarth, husbanding each syllable, said, ‘Never… touched… anyone… Never… wanted… to…’ Then, framing the words clearly, ‘Bureau. Top drawer,’ and David knew what he sought. He crossed to the bureau and opened the drawer. The portrait of Amy Crispin still lay on top of a pile of neatly laundered shirts and he took it out, holding it so that Howarth could see it. Perhaps a minute passed before he said, just audibly, ‘Wish I’d been able to believe. Leave it when you go.’

  He put the photograph on the cluttered night table and tried to think of something comforting to say, something that Howarth would not find embarrassing. It was not easy. All his life Howarth had been trying to increase the thickness of the shell that encased his emotions. He took his hand again and said, carefully, ‘Can you hear me? Don’t talk, just nod,’ and Howarth nodded, so obediently that the gesture seemed grossly out of character. ‘You’ve done a thundering good job here. That’s something to believe in. I won’t ever forget you. Neither will any of the old stagers, or any of the boys you taught. As for me, I’d like to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. But for you I wouldn’t be here. Since I am, I’d like you to know nothing is going to shake me loose now, Howarth. Did you get that?’

  Howarth nodded twice and closed his eyes, lying so still that David thought he had slipped away, but he hadn’t. Presently he began to cough, and half sat up, his eyes blazing with fury, so that for a moment he looked his old self as he spluttered, ‘Bloody cough – fetch him…’ and David called the nurse, who sidled in and picked up a beaker half-full of barley water.

  He left then, his thoughts in a whirl, and it was not until he reached the sanctuary of his study that he realised he was still holding Howarth’s will. He glanced at it again, realising that Bamfylde was richer by something like eleven thousand pounds.

  The nursing home matron rang soon after lunch and he almost choked on the words identifying himself. She said, coolly, ‘No panic, Mr Powlett-Jones. Dr Willoughby thought you’d like to know it’s started. He seems very pleased with her. Will you be coming over?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Whenever it’s convenient.’

  He wanted to shout, ‘Of course I’ll come! Get back to her, you idiot!’ but then he remembered Willoughby and the specialist would be with her, for the Bristol man had promised to make a special trip down that day and had phoned mid-morning to say she was in excellent shape. He said, hoarsely, ‘I’ll come within the hour,’ and she said, impersonally, ‘Good… good…’ and rang off.

  He stood there holding the receiver, his mouth parched and dry, his knees trembling so violently that he had to brace them against the door of the cupboard supports of the desk. The bell rang for the first period. ‘It would,’ he thought, savagely, ‘it always does somehow…’ but then he got hold of himself and went in search of Barnaby, catching him crossing the quad on his way to the Sixth.

  ‘Chris is having her baby,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘Can you take the Sixth for Howarth?’ and as he said it he realised that, like everybody else, he was assuming Howarth would be back on the job in a day or so. Barnaby said, gently, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, P.J. I’ve got a free period myself mid-afternoon. You’re driving over now?’

  ‘Right away. Thanks, Barnaby. Have you looked in on Howarth today?’

  ‘No, the night nurse told me he was having a bad spell…’

  ‘He won’t last the day but keep it to yourself. Sorry to put so much on you. I’ll ring if I’m delayed.’ He left Barnaby looking very startled and went round to the cycle sheds where Bamfylde’s few cars were parked. Chris’s silvery bumble bee stood there under a tarpaulin and his mind, conjuring with possibilities as it always did when he was seeking escape from unpleasant thoughts, toyed with the idea of pulling down the ratty old sheds and building a ga
rage block here. In the years ahead, he supposed, almost every adult at Bamfylde would own a car or motorcycle, and they wouldn’t want them kept under tarpaulins.

  He headed west into a golden afternoon, thinking of Chris, of all the high hopes she had pinned on this moment, and of poor old Howarth, gasping his life away in those bachelor quarters, off Nicolson’s landing. It would take him a long time to get accustomed to life up here without Howarth. Algy had gone, but Algy was still available when he was needed. With Howarth gone he and Barnaby would be the only survivors of the First World War rump, and it would seem lonely, just the two of them. Staff were not much different from boys in that way. They came, stayed a little longer than the average boy, and then left, either by way of Bat Ferguson and Judy Cordwainer, or by way of Carter and Irvine. The same thing had happened with two of the three women in his life, Beth and Julia Darbyshire. One day they were there, the next they were gone, and it was of Beth he thought as he dropped into second gear to tackle Quarry Hill, remembering passing this way in a more carefree mood one sunny May afternoon in 1920, when he had driven over to take his first peep at the twins. Howarth’s enigmatic remark returned to him – ‘Wish I could have believed…’ Believed in what exactly? In God? In marriages made in heaven? In Amy Crispin’s lasting affection for him? Probably the first, for Howarth, although a born cynic, had never professed himself an atheist. Just one of the bewildered majority facing the fact that they had no way of knowing whether life was a planned process or a cosmic accident. It was strange, he thought, that in all their discussions, talk that had ranged over almost every conceivable topic, they had so rarely touched on faith.

  He read the good news in Willoughby’s face the moment he ran up the steps and met him in the act of lighting his cherrywood pipe beside the receptionist’s desk.

  ‘Went like clockwork,’ he said, eagerly. ‘A boy. Seven pounds, three ounces, and yelling his head off! About an hour ago, soon after matron’s phone call actually.’

  ‘Chris?’

  ‘She’s bonnie. And drunk with triumph. Never knew such a stayer. She’d absolutely made up her mind to it. She’ll take me more seriously in future, I hope. I was always telling her there was absolutely nothing to stop her producing a live child.’

  ‘An hour ago, you said? Should I go in?’

  Willoughby considered, drawing noisily on his pipe. ‘I’d leave it a bit if I were you. She’s asleep. It’s only three-thirty yet. Suppose you accompany me on a couple of local calls, we take a dish of tea in Glossops then pop back here about five-thirty? They can manage headless for that long, can’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but poor old Howarth is dying, Doc.’

  The news didn’t surprise him. He said, ‘Amazed he lasted this long. Tough old bird.’ Then, shrewdly, ‘He talked you into letting him go back there, I imagine?’

  ‘I don’t regret it. Should I?’

  ‘No, no. Kindest thing to do. Made it much easier on him, but you’d better go on pretending to be shocked. Some of the parents might think it wasn’t quite the thing in the circumstances,’ but David said, ‘To hell with that. If Alcock could die on the premises why couldn’t Howarth? He was as much a part of the place as Algy and I’m going to miss him like hell.’

  ‘Queer chap,’ Willoughby said. ‘Frankly I have always respected him without being able to like him. But you did both, didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew him better than most people.’

  He found her much as he had found Beth when he had called in this same place for the same reason eighteen years before. Radiant, and extraordinarily pleased with herself, so much so that he thought, smiling, ‘Why the devil did she ever bother with politics? This is what she really wanted. Maybe it’ll take some of the steam out of her and that can’t be a bad thing. We’ve all got too much head of steam these days.’

  She said, ‘Have you seen him yet? He’s an absolute cherub, Davy, and very much the Celt. Or will be, as soon as he loses that outraged look they all seem to start off with. Long bones and lots of dark hair. No doubt at all about him being yours,’ and he said, letting his hand run over her own smooth brown head, ‘Fine time to be telling me that. Was it as bad as you thought?’ and she said, ‘No, not as bad as the last miss, and a lot more rewarding.’

  He didn’t stay long. He had a suspicion amounting to a certainty that Howarth would have gone by the time he got back, and it seemed a shabby thing to cloud her happiness with such dismal news. He drove back through the gathering dusk and stopped a mile or so beyond Quarry Hill, where he could just see the lights of Bamfylde winking under long, blue trailers of mist. The day had brought good news and bad, like most other days up there, and it crossed his mind that it might be an idea to marry the events by naming his son Ian, after Howarth. In a way, the crusty old chap had seemed to move on to make room for the child. Chris had wanted to call him David but he had had too much experience with duplicated initials to agree to that. In a place like Bamfylde identity mattered, and two David Powlett-Joneses about the place simply wouldn’t do. He wondered how Grace would take it, a baby brother eighteen years her junior, and decided it didn’t really matter much, for Grace wouldn’t stay indefinitely. One or another of her swains would come asking for her in a year or so and he wondered, briefly, which of them it was likely to be. His money was on Winterbourne, who made no secret of his affection for her. He remembered seeing them only last summer, strolling up towards the planty hand in hand, not the least bit interested in the match against Somerset Stragglers being fought out on the pitch.

  It was curious how life seemed to weave a pattern that was not in the least haphazard, as it so often seemed to be. His own, for instance, and Keith Winterbourne’s and Grace’s, all linked by the fatal circumstances of that sultry day in 1925, when Winterbourne had appeared out of a blinding rain-storm and drawn him into that hideout he had beside the rushing stream.

  He restarted the engine and went along the level stretch to the foot of the plateau, where a rather fussed Renshaw-Smith signalled him as he turned in at the corner of Nicolson’s to head round the main buildings.

  ‘You won’t have heard about poor Howarth,’ he said. ‘He died, quite suddenly, about two hours after you left. I was going to ring the nursing home but Barnaby said you had other things to worry about. How is Mrs Powlett-Jones, Headmaster?’

  Renshaw-Smith had never been able to bring himself to use an informal mode of address and David had been obliged to accept his rectitude.

  ‘She’s fine. Just presented me with a seven-pound boy. You’re the very first to know.’

  ‘I am? She has? But that’s splendid! …Absolutely splendid! …Congratulations, Headmaster!’

  He was so delighted that chance had chosen him for the honour of being the first Bamfeldian to hear the great news that he forgot for a moment he had been the bearer of such gloomy tidings. David said, to correct any impression Renshaw-Smith might have that he was taking Howarth’s death calmly, ‘I saw Howarth this morning and realised then that he was critically ill. I’ve just been talking to Dr Willoughby about him. I’ll have to get him over right away.’

  He parked the car and stared up at the windows of Nicolson’s, relieved in a way that old Howarth was released, but sorry he died without learning that Chris’s guts and determination had been rewarded. They had always got along very well, Howarth having seen her as a fighter the day she arrived and he recalled again that it had been Howarth who urged him to put Chris to work in the Cradle.

  He cut through the kitchen passage, out into the quad, then into his own house, where Rigby told him Grace was with matron, tracing laundry that had gone astray and been the subject of tiresome correspondence.

  ‘Shall I tell her you’re back, sir?’

  ‘No, Rigby. I’ll see her at dinner.’

  ‘Very well, sir. I’ll be serving in twenty minutes.’

  He went into the study, where the day’s correspondence was spread out on the right-hand side of his desk, with a note from Grac
e telling him which letters had been answered, which were pending. One unopened letter marked ‘Personal’ lay there. It had an American stamp and a Boston postmark. He opened it absentmindedly and was amazed to find it was a letter from Julia Darbyshire, the first he had received since that day in 1927, when she had written telling him of her marriage to Sprockman, the restaurateur. He let his eye run down the pages with a sense of wonder that the letter should reach him today of all days.

  It had a breezy, impersonal note, almost as though they had been corresponding regularly all these years, and concerned her eldest son, Charles, now almost eleven. She was asking if he would have room for him next term, when he would be coming up to twelve. She had two other children, both daughters, but Hiram Sprockman had died the year before, leaving her comfortably off. She had a poor opinion, it seemed, of the American educational system,

  You recall what an Anglophile Hiram was and he was determined to send the boy to an English school as soon as he reached his teens. He liked you, and I told him everything I remembered about Bamfylde, even the reason I left. That made him laugh for nearly a week. Shortly before he died he asked me to try and get Charles fixed up there as soon as he was old enough, so here goes. If there’s no vacancy, or if you have any prejudice against Americans, I’ll understand, but I’m sure Charles could manage the entrance exam. Drop me a line saying yes or no, because if it’s no I shall send him to Canada. And if you’re wondering how I knew you were still there (and headmaster to boot!) put it down to our business efficiency over here. All I did was to call our advertising agency, giving the name and location. They called me back in twenty minutes with all the details, including the fees. I hope you’re well and happy, P.J. I’ve never ceased to think kindly of you.